Moe Foner, Flo Ziegfield of Labor, subject of multiple poems,
liked both the word and the act of Hocking, Yiddish
with chop at its root, and with the familiar phrase so many
of us knowfrom our hocking childhoods: hak mir nisht keyn
tshaynik which translates in an inelegant way:
Stop Bugging Me (or don’t keep banging on the teapot) and I
who have the incessant gene (perhaps it is actually a hocking gene)
sent an email again to a friend today who I have written to SEVEN TIMES
asking her for SOMETHING SMALL only a letter I want her to write
saying She Likes My Book to a woman she knows in publishing
I know I should just give it up
it doesn’t matter but I in the spirit of Moe Foner recognize
the counterintuitive wisdom in one of his thousands
of notions (with the potential to be collected in a small volume:
Sayings from Chairman Moe): You Can Never Hock Too Much.
Hock on! I loved hearing moe hock! His hock was a “symphony of jackhammers”.
Growing up my father would say something that sounded to me like "stop Hocking me to China". I imagine you can hear his tone of voice and see his expression while he did it