Lyrical Somerville

Lyrical Somerville – July 18

On July 18, 2012, in Latest News, by The Somerville Times

In her new book Journey into A Dark Past Norma Roth traces her ancestral roots back to Eastern Europe, as it is now and how it was devastated by the Nazi occupation and destruction of Jewish peoples there. It is a poignant and relentless search for meaning and family bonds in which the author both recognizes the great culture that once existed and questions how it could ever have been the target of Hitler’s ruthless determination to exterminate the Jewish people who developed it. Interspersed with a travelogue of her journeys back to these cities, she writes marvelous poems of startling revelation and understanding.

A Start

by Norma Roth

To discover these roots

Is painful

Yet– there is beauty here too:

In its architecture

In its art

Its music

In all that my grandfather,

Father and mother held dear,

It is a start.

More than that

My family was formed

Here:

In Budapest

In Vienna

In Prague

In Nagyvarad (now Oradea)

All that they were, became –

And lost, are h ere too.

It is a start:

Joy, beauty mix with

Pain, sorrow

Cities of their Youth:

Hopes

Dreams

Love

Riches

Cities that spawned, formed –

And deformed them.

I had to come here

I am after all them:

They are me

I carry their genes

All that remains

And that will be

All that is

I need to know

To see their land

To feel its pulse

To feel it:

Its beauty and

Terribleness

To know they were more than I knew

To see they were more than I saw

To sense they were something other

It is a start without end….

p, 35-37

***** This book is available at the Harvard Book Store

through their instant Paige M Gutenberg Press book section.

Norma Roth holds a B.A. from Hunter College, an M.A. from Simmons College and a

J.D. From Suffolk Law School. She is a lawyer, educator and writer. She currently

spends her time between Cambridge, MA and Lincoln, NH.

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