Shakespeare famously said, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet;" (Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 2). But we know that names do in fact matter. I have always been fascinated

by different naming customs, and the cycles of name popularity. My new book, Lily of the Valley—An American Jewish Journey, about five generations of American Jewish women, depicts a rather prototypical cycle of Ashkenazi (European) Jewish American naming customs.
The very first Lily leaves Eastern Europe with the name "Laili," which an Ellis Island official declares unpronounceable. He re-names her "Lily" and she is thrilled to have what she considers an American name. It is the custom among Ashkenazi Jews to name after someone who has died, and so she names her daughter after her own mother, who was named "Malkie." But that sounds too outdated, not American enough, so she calls her daughter "Molly." Molly in turn will name her daughter "Lily," after the first Lily, who has died, and so on through the generations.
In the society at large, we know that names go in cycles. The Mollys, Emmas, Lilys, Sams and Maxes of the early 20th Century became the baby boomer Marcias, Ellens, Lindas, Stewarts and Martins. The 80's gave us Amanda, Megan, Lindsey and Sean. And now we seem to be back to Emma, Molly and Max.
But immigrants to our shores today often keep the names they were given in their home countries. Or try to. Which brings us to the hundreds of immigrants today known as FNU. There was a Wall Street Journal article by Miriam Jordan in March of 2016 about them. Apparently, these are people who came here from places like Afghanistan and parts of Asia and applied for visas with the only names they had—single, often very long first names. But U.S. immigration forms demand two names, and woe betide the hapless immigrant who leaves a blank. Many report that when they finally receive their visas, they are identified as FNU plus their own first name, often long and seeming to Americans to be last names. Their Social Security cards, driver's licenses and other identification automatically identify them as FNU, which Americans naturally struggle to pronounce and often assume is some exotic name from a far-off place.
Except it's not. FNU is the acronym that the government in its infinite bureaucratic wisdom assigns immigrants who specify only one name. And so it turns out that FNU stands for "First Name Unknown." The article reports the frustrations of FNUs trying to rid themselves of the unwanted acronym. The official red tape is often too much to bear, and some have resigned themselves to waiting until they become citizens and can specify their own name. Or names if necessary!
But one of my favorite naming stories comes via a school teacher in Philadelphia. She had a little girl in her class whom the immigrant mother introduced as "Fah-mah-li." The teacher commented on what a pretty-sounding name it was and asked what the meaning of it was in her native country. The mother responded that it was an American name, that, in fact, the nurses at the hospital had named her. Confused, the teacher asked her what she meant. The mother replied that when her daughter was born, the nurses immediately put a bracelet on her with her name. Now becoming just a tad suspicious, the teacher asked her how the name was spelled. The proud and delighted mother responded, "F-E-M-A-L-E!"
As the saying goes, "Only in America!"

by different naming customs, and the cycles of name popularity. My new book, Lily of the Valley—An American Jewish Journey, about five generations of American Jewish women, depicts a rather prototypical cycle of Ashkenazi (European) Jewish American naming customs.
The very first Lily leaves Eastern Europe with the name "Laili," which an Ellis Island official declares unpronounceable. He re-names her "Lily" and she is thrilled to have what she considers an American name. It is the custom among Ashkenazi Jews to name after someone who has died, and so she names her daughter after her own mother, who was named "Malkie." But that sounds too outdated, not American enough, so she calls her daughter "Molly." Molly in turn will name her daughter "Lily," after the first Lily, who has died, and so on through the generations.
In the society at large, we know that names go in cycles. The Mollys, Emmas, Lilys, Sams and Maxes of the early 20th Century became the baby boomer Marcias, Ellens, Lindas, Stewarts and Martins. The 80's gave us Amanda, Megan, Lindsey and Sean. And now we seem to be back to Emma, Molly and Max.
But immigrants to our shores today often keep the names they were given in their home countries. Or try to. Which brings us to the hundreds of immigrants today known as FNU. There was a Wall Street Journal article by Miriam Jordan in March of 2016 about them. Apparently, these are people who came here from places like Afghanistan and parts of Asia and applied for visas with the only names they had—single, often very long first names. But U.S. immigration forms demand two names, and woe betide the hapless immigrant who leaves a blank. Many report that when they finally receive their visas, they are identified as FNU plus their own first name, often long and seeming to Americans to be last names. Their Social Security cards, driver's licenses and other identification automatically identify them as FNU, which Americans naturally struggle to pronounce and often assume is some exotic name from a far-off place.
Except it's not. FNU is the acronym that the government in its infinite bureaucratic wisdom assigns immigrants who specify only one name. And so it turns out that FNU stands for "First Name Unknown." The article reports the frustrations of FNUs trying to rid themselves of the unwanted acronym. The official red tape is often too much to bear, and some have resigned themselves to waiting until they become citizens and can specify their own name. Or names if necessary!
But one of my favorite naming stories comes via a school teacher in Philadelphia. She had a little girl in her class whom the immigrant mother introduced as "Fah-mah-li." The teacher commented on what a pretty-sounding name it was and asked what the meaning of it was in her native country. The mother responded that it was an American name, that, in fact, the nurses at the hospital had named her. Confused, the teacher asked her what she meant. The mother replied that when her daughter was born, the nurses immediately put a bracelet on her with her name. Now becoming just a tad suspicious, the teacher asked her how the name was spelled. The proud and delighted mother responded, "F-E-M-A-L-E!"
As the saying goes, "Only in America!"

"For the land beyond the Lower East Side
And New York's endless stone and steel,
Where the other shore was three months' ride—
California, where the gold was real.
The north was booming, but the southern part
Was the place that captured Lily's heart.

A place they called Los Angeles where
It never rained, was never cold,
Where the scent of orange filled the air
And palm trees lined the streets of gold.
Not for Lily's family, no.
But a grandchild, maybe, one day would go."
(From Part 1- Lily)
People ask me all the time why I choose to write my stories in verse. It's a very interesting question, especially since I don't feel that I really do the choosing. My new book, Lily of the Valley—An American Jewish Journey, is a verse novella because it came to me in verse form. What do I mean by that? I certainly do not mean to imply that it just appeared before me fully formed as a poem. Far from it—I'm certainly not Mozart taking dictation! As with most poets and writers, whatever I am working on requires working, and re-working, over and over.
However, a big part of my creative process, and something I have always taught my creative writing students, is learning to be receptive. When I am receptive, open and wiling to listen, stories come to me. Characters talk to me, just as Lily began whispering to me on my morning walk many years ago. She began telling me her story, and I felt compelled to start taking notes.
But something else happens to me when a story starts coming. It tells me the form in which it needs to be told. Sometimes my stories come as prose, but more often that not they come as poems. Even the particular verse form comes; I do not choose it. My children's book, Mindel and the Misfit Dragons, for instance, came in the four-line ballad stanza, while Lily of the Valley, a book for adults, is in sestets of iambic tetrameter. I may start to feel the lines flow through me, almost pump through, in which case I have to stop whatever I'm doing and grab a pen. Or else they may come in spurts at unexpected times of the day.  A whole story certainly does not come at once, nor even a whole chapter. But enough lines and stanzas will come—and feel right for this story, feel right for these characters and their narrative voice—that I know I have my template. I know I have the structure, or more accurately perhaps the vessel, for telling the rest of the story.
Then the real work begins. The active listening, the drawing out, the shaping and paring, the writing and revising. It can take weeks, months or years, but there is a special joy in writing poetry—the musicality of it, the unique satisfaction of having the sound and sense of a stanza click, that is absolutely exhilarating.
Though I did not consciously choose to write Lily of the Valley as a verse novella, I do believe the verse form enhances the story in several ways. One is that it plays into the allegorical nature of the story. That is, Lily can be read as a narrative but also as symbolic of the whole American immigrant story. Since poetry at its core deals with essence, this comes through more clearly than if this were, say, a 600 page family saga. I once read an interesting analogy that the difference between a novel and a poem is like the difference between an oil painting and a piece of sculpture. The oil painting is rich in detail and many-layered, but the sculpture captures essence. There cannot be an extraneous bit of clay. So, too, a novel is rich in detail and vast in scope, but a poem captures essence; there cannot be an extraneous line. Another way I believe the verse form enhances this story is that poetry by its nature is lyrical. And for me there is something lyrical and haunting about Lily, which tells me that it could not have been written any other way.
I'm well aware that modern readers are not so accustomed to reading stories as poems. But once upon a time, before the invention of the printing press, almost all stories were told as poems. They were sung in castle halls, told before the fire in great manor houses, in forests and on desert sands. The rhyme and rhythm of poetry made the narratives easier for the bards and troubadours to remember. Literature began as an oral medium, and the earliest written stories continued the poetic tradition.
For me there is a certain pleasure that poetry provides the eye and ear. One reviewer captured this when she said that the experience of reading Lily was more like watching a musical than just seeing a movie. I've always loved musicals, and I love the way the musicality of poetry can propel a story. But mostly, I just let a story tell itself. And so Lily of the Valley is a verse novella. I sincerely hope that everyone will experience in reading this book the same delight that I felt in writing it.

A place they called Los Angeles where
It never rained, was never cold,
Where the scent of orange filled the air
And palm trees lined the streets of gold.
Not for Lily's family, no.
But a grandchild, maybe, one day would go."
(From Part 1- Lily)
People ask me all the time why I choose to write my stories in verse. It's a very interesting question, especially since I don't feel that I really do the choosing. My new book, Lily of the Valley—An American Jewish Journey, is a verse novella because it came to me in verse form. What do I mean by that? I certainly do not mean to imply that it just appeared before me fully formed as a poem. Far from it—I'm certainly not Mozart taking dictation! As with most poets and writers, whatever I am working on requires working, and re-working, over and over.
However, a big part of my creative process, and something I have always taught my creative writing students, is learning to be receptive. When I am receptive, open and wiling to listen, stories come to me. Characters talk to me, just as Lily began whispering to me on my morning walk many years ago. She began telling me her story, and I felt compelled to start taking notes.
But something else happens to me when a story starts coming. It tells me the form in which it needs to be told. Sometimes my stories come as prose, but more often that not they come as poems. Even the particular verse form comes; I do not choose it. My children's book, Mindel and the Misfit Dragons, for instance, came in the four-line ballad stanza, while Lily of the Valley, a book for adults, is in sestets of iambic tetrameter. I may start to feel the lines flow through me, almost pump through, in which case I have to stop whatever I'm doing and grab a pen. Or else they may come in spurts at unexpected times of the day.  A whole story certainly does not come at once, nor even a whole chapter. But enough lines and stanzas will come—and feel right for this story, feel right for these characters and their narrative voice—that I know I have my template. I know I have the structure, or more accurately perhaps the vessel, for telling the rest of the story.
Then the real work begins. The active listening, the drawing out, the shaping and paring, the writing and revising. It can take weeks, months or years, but there is a special joy in writing poetry—the musicality of it, the unique satisfaction of having the sound and sense of a stanza click, that is absolutely exhilarating.
Though I did not consciously choose to write Lily of the Valley as a verse novella, I do believe the verse form enhances the story in several ways. One is that it plays into the allegorical nature of the story. That is, Lily can be read as a narrative but also as symbolic of the whole American immigrant story. Since poetry at its core deals with essence, this comes through more clearly than if this were, say, a 600 page family saga. I once read an interesting analogy that the difference between a novel and a poem is like the difference between an oil painting and a piece of sculpture. The oil painting is rich in detail and many-layered, but the sculpture captures essence. There cannot be an extraneous bit of clay. So, too, a novel is rich in detail and vast in scope, but a poem captures essence; there cannot be an extraneous line. Another way I believe the verse form enhances this story is that poetry by its nature is lyrical. And for me there is something lyrical and haunting about Lily, which tells me that it could not have been written any other way.
I'm well aware that modern readers are not so accustomed to reading stories as poems. But once upon a time, before the invention of the printing press, almost all stories were told as poems. They were sung in castle halls, told before the fire in great manor houses, in forests and on desert sands. The rhyme and rhythm of poetry made the narratives easier for the bards and troubadours to remember. Literature began as an oral medium, and the earliest written stories continued the poetic tradition.
For me there is a certain pleasure that poetry provides the eye and ear. One reviewer captured this when she said that the experience of reading Lily was more like watching a musical than just seeing a movie. I've always loved musicals, and I love the way the musicality of poetry can propel a story. But mostly, I just let a story tell itself. And so Lily of the Valley is a verse novella. I sincerely hope that everyone will experience in reading this book the same delight that I felt in writing it.