MAY 19 • 2022 | 103

ARTS&LIFE
POETRY

J

anet Ruth Heller likes to 
joke that her first publisher 
was her first-grade teacher. 
It happened after the woman 
gave a poetry writing assignment 
to Heller’s entire Milwaukee class 
and learned of the many poems 
the youngster had written. The 
teacher especially liked a verse 
about the emerging poet’s flying a 
kite with her dad, mimeographed 
it and gave a copy to each of the 
other students.
“Twenty-five copies of purple 
ink,
” Heller happily recalled.
Some 65 years later, Heller hap-
pily has released her fourth poetry 
book, Nature’s Olympics (Wipf and 
Stock Publishers), which uses out-
door images to probe penetrating 
ideas, some delving into Judaism.
“I have been devoted to nature 
since I was a little girl,
” said Heller, 
a retired university professor 

living in 
Portage. “My 
dad taught 
me about trees and plants 
and stars and animals, and I 
absorbed his love of nature. 
“The poems in this book were 
written over a lot of my life. The 
oldest poems were written when I 
was an undergraduate in college. 
The most recent were written in 
2021. 
“There isn’t just one theme, but 
there are some related themes. 
For example, I find nature very 
comforting so some of the poems 
speak about my having a bad day 
or being in a state of despair and 
having some encounter with the 
natural world that changes my 
mood and my outlook on life 
completely.
” 
“Haven,
” for instance, was writ-
ten after Heller walked beside a 

Wisconsin lake and chanced upon 
a beautiful garden, which she 
imagines would be like finding 
Eden. “Unveiling” becomes an 
elegy for her father as it describes 
his influence in sharing a love for 
nature with his children. 
“I have nature poems in my 
other books, but this book is all 
nature poetry,
” Heller said.
In contrast, an earlier Heller 
book, Exodus, modernizes 
Midrashim. She presents inter-
pretations and psychological 
explorations of people and events 
in the Bible. 
Heller uses the central meta-
phor of the exodus from Egypt 
to explore the journey people 
take when deciding 
to take on new 
experiences. 
Individual poems 
address leaving a 
bad relationship, 
finding a new job 
and taking risks. 
Many of the poems 
are dramatic mono-
logues from char-
acters in the Jewish 
scriptures. 
Heller’s poems have 
appeared in antholo-
gies and Jewish peri-
odicals, such as Studies 
in American Jewish Literature, Shofar 
and The Jewish Quarterly. 
“I read an essay about Edna 
St. Vincent Millay when I was in 
junior high, and that’s the first 
time it occurred to me that I 
could be a woman writer,
” said 
Heller, also a writer of produced 
plays and children’s books, includ-
ing The Passover Surprise. 
“I always liked to write, and 
my teachers encouraged me. In 
high school, I was on the staff 
of the literary magazine. I was 
also on the staff of the literary 
magazine at Oberlin College and 
Conservatory in Ohio, where I 
was double majoring in English 
and Spanish.
”
After earning bachelor’s and 

master’s degrees in English at 
the University of Wisconsin in 
Madison, she earned a doctoral 
degree in English language and 
literature from the University 
of Chicago. Along the way, she 
studied Hebrew and Hebrew lit-
erature.
Heller, who moved to Michigan 
in 1989, has taught at many col-
leges around the state, including 
Grand Valley State University, 
Michigan State University and 
Western Michigan University. A 
member of Temple B’nai Israel in 
Kalamazoo, her career also has 
included teaching and administra-
tive jobs at Hebrew schools.
Heller and her husband, former 
long-time elementary teacher 
Michael Krischer, reinforce their 
devotion to the natural world with 
retirement activities. Together, 
they care for a garden, replete 
with raspberries, on their prop-
erty. While she prefers hiking, he 
favors bicycling and is a board 
member of the Kalamazoo Bicycle 
Club.
“I do a lot of work for nonprofit 
organizations right now, and I’m 
president of the Michigan College 
English Association, which holds 
an annual conference where peo-
ple present both creative writing 
and scholarly work virtually and 
in person,
” said Heller, whose own 
creative projects have addressed 
issues of bullying and antisemi-
tism based on her experiences. 
“I’m also very active in my 
synagogue, especially with what 
we call the Green Team. We’re 
working on ways to make the 
synagogue more environmentally 
conscious. For example, we are 
involved in installing solar panels. 
We have a charging station for 
electric vehicles in our parking lot 
and a compost bin.
” 
And in line with a vastly 
expressed appreciation of nature, 
Heller remains intent on the syn-
agogue use of environmentally 
conscious ways of gardening and 
landscaping. 

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Inspired 
by Nature

West Michigan-based poet’s 
new volume is Nature’s 
Olympics.

Janet Ruth 
Heller

