ARTS&LIFE POETRY
memories to the just the music of the passage of time. words,” Hochberg “Then I would say said. “Often the Waiting for the a line. We would go poems would surSnow: Poems on in that fashion prise me, illumiis available on Amazon. for a while.” nating something I $12.95. On her own and didn’t realize I knew. with what she antic“The writing has ipated as perpetually private, been a map of the wanderings Hochberg wrote about heritage, of my soul through the world. relationships, everyday activ“Years ago, I attended a readities and anything that gave ing by poet Robert Bly, and he her pause. While her closest said something like poetry is relatives, a brother and sister, the place where the soul and as well as friends followed her the world touch, and it made an classical piano training, chamimpression on me.” ber group performances and Raised in a secular Jewish home gardening talents in Oak home with a strong cultural Park, they were not told about identity, Hochberg has a few the poems. poems that reflect the Judaism “They are all reflections, she explored in adulthood. aspects and facets of myself,” Hochberg studied religion said Hochberg, who also through programs offered by devoted time to writing movie the Florence Melton School of reviews for the Metro Times. Adult Jewish Learning. The pandemic kept her Jewish heritage entered writing poems and somehow into thoughts about family, awakened her to the possibility unknown and known. In honor of opening up her reflections of her personally unknown through publishing. After work great-grandmother, she wrote: with other nurses testing people “From the ashes for COVID-19 and thinking of your unmarked grave about the life-threatening at Treblinka implications of the pandemic, the light of your spirit rises Hochberg contemplated morto inspire my life.” tality and wanted an aspect of “In 2011, I traveled to Poland herself to be lasting. with an Israeli company,” “I had all these poems, and Hochberg said. “I saw paintthere was something in me that ed synagogues, and I visited wanted to create a book,” said Treblinka, where so many of Hochberg, 60. “I wanted my my family members perished. poems to be preserved in the I walked the same streets of world.” Warsaw where my maternal Through Mission Point Press grandparents walked, and we in Traverse City, she chose 50 briefly stopped in the town poems for her book Waiting where my father was born.” for the Snow: Poems. The Whether about travels or title comes from a poem that daily experiences, Hochberg reflects on a Sunday of shoppresents a serious outlook. ping before a snowfall. It reads “Occasionally, I am kept in part: awake by lines of poetry that “Home before the first flakes come to me late at night,” Drift from the sky.” Hochberg said. “The poems [enter into] “I rest easier after I write exploration and awareness and them down.”
Details
Deborah Hochberg
The Music of Words
Metro Detroiter publishes book of poetry that reflects on her personal experiences and Jewish heritage. SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
W
hile most of Deborah Hochberg’s professional hours have been spent as a nurse practitioner helping patients overcome insomnia, many of her waking hours away from work have been given to the satisfaction of writing poetry to express deep feelings. It started years ago after observing the way her late father, Israel Hochberg, wrote verse in English and Hebrew. Gradually, they wrote together. “We would talk on the phone, and he would say a line,” Hochberg recalled about their subjects, which vary from
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