A collaboration born of a shared love of music, photography, poetry, and Indiana, this book celebrates the history, literature, and art that informs the present and shapes our identity. Richard Fields's black and white photos are evocative imaginings of Norbert Krapf's poems, visual metaphors that extend and deepen their vision. Krapf's poems pay tribute to poets from Homer and Virgil to Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Wendell Berry, and to singer-songwriters such as Woody Guthrie and John Lennon. They also explore the poet's German heritage, question ethnic prejudice and social conflict, and praise the natural world. The book includes a cycle of 15 poems about Bob Dylan; a public poem written in response to 9/11, "Prayer to Walt Whitman at Ground Zero"; "Back Home," a poem reproduced in a stained glass panel at the Indianapolis airport; and ruminations on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, "Questions on a Wall."

Songs in Sepia and Black and White

Literature & Fiction

Krapf, Norbert

Poetry

Quarry Books

Bloodroot showcases poetry from the collected works of Jasper, Indiana, native Norbert Krapf. Spanning 35 years, these poems focus on Krapf's experiences living in southern Indiana and the intersection of his life with his German ancestry. Forty of the poems are published here for the first time. 
Photographs by David Pierini, inspired by Krapf's work with many taken in and around Dubois County, grace this evocative portrait of a poet and place.

Bloodroot: Indiana Poems

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

The author documents in great detail why and how he finally (after fifty years of refusing to do so), went public with what had been done to him as a young boy in the 1950s by the pastor of his family's Catholic parish in Jasper, Indiana, a man who was a supposed friend of his parents. Each step in Krapf's ongoing recovery is documented in careful prose, with frequent references to his book of poetry on the abuse, Catholic Boy Blues, which he published in 2014 at age 70.

Shrinking the Monster: Healing the Wounds of Our Abuse

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

In Extenso Press

Norbert Krapf, past Indiana Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize nominee, emeritus prof. of English at Long Island University, and author of twenty-five critically acclaimed books, has written a new book, "Catholic Boy Blues: A Poet's Journal of Healing." Norbert is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. After fifty years of struggling with his past, he felt that by confronting it in writing, he could offer fellow victims comfort, healing, and a sense of freedom from the long-term effects of abuse. The 130 poems he selected from the 325 he wrote came in four voices: the boy he was, the man he became, Mr. Blues (a fictional friend, mentor, and counselor), and the Priest. This is the 2015 updated version of the book.

Catholic Boy Blues: A Poet's Journal of Healing

Divided into 4 sections, BITTERSWEET has an overall narrative design. The 81 poems tell the story of the author's move to Long Island from a German community in the Midwest; settling in with his Cajun wife in the historic village of Roslyn, where poet William Cullen Bryant lived at his Cedarmere estate; the coming of their two Colombian infants in the early 80s; and participating in their growth and development. Woven throughout the poems is a love of gardening and Long Island natural history. Walt Whitman and William Cullen Bryant figure prominently in the collection. There are also tributes to poets Richard Wilbur, William Stafford, James Wright,and David Ignatow. The cover is a 1932 woodcut of Roslyn by Henry R. Diamond, a friend of Christopher Morley. 
With "Somewhere in Southern Indiana" (1993) and "Blue-Eyed Grass: Poems of Germany" (1997), "Bittersweet" completes a trilogy about places that have inspired the author to write poetry

Bittersweet Along the Expressway : Poems of Long Island

Waterline Books

In a form that is a hybrid of flash autobiography and prose poetry, former Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf revisits the past and reflects on its relationship with the present.  American Dreams: Reveries and Revisitations contains seven cycles, all but one of which has ten sections, each introduced with a photograph.  The author  meditates on family history, scenes from his ancestral past, and childhood memories. Featuring quirky perspectives and spoken in various voices, some ironic, Krapf's reveries lift the thin veil between dream and nightmare set in Europe and America. In the last section, the voice of Minnesota minstrel Bob Dylan sometimes merges with that of the poet, and the fellow Midwesterners, who found their voices in New York, cross boundaries to explore and celebrate the common origin of poetry and song.

American Dreams: Reveries and Revisitations

Mongrel Empire Press

Somewhere in Southern Indiana: Poems of Midwestern Origins

A Midwesterner's recollection of his Indiana heritage, including reflections upon his German pioneer ancestors, nature in its magnificent simplicity, and memories of his childhood.

Time Being Books

In this collection, which includes "Fire and Ice," winner of the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Norbert Krapf returns to the settings and themes of his highly regarded Somewhere in Southern Indiana. A writer for whom place has been a major inspiration, Krapf continues his exploration of family history, relationships between people of different ethnic backgrounds, nature, and the passage of time. He extends his meditations on the Holocaust that conclude Blue-Eyed Grass: Poems of Germany to the treatment of the Miami Indians of his native region and a racial incident from his college years. The title echoes a line from Midwestern songwriter Bob Dylan, the subject of a tribute; refers to the poet’s native Indiana, the American Heartland, the United States as a whole; and evokes a mythic homeland.

The Country I Come From

Archer Books

Sweet Sister Moon

WordTech Communications

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Krapf, Norbert. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Krapf, Norbert

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Krapf, Norbert. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Songs in Sepia and Black and White

Bloodroot: Indiana Poems

Shrinking the Monster: Healing the Wounds of Our Abuse

Catholic Boy Blues: A Poet's Journal of Healing

Bittersweet Along the Expressway : Poems of Long Island

American Dreams: Reveries and Revisitations

Somewhere in Southern Indiana: Poems of Midwestern Origins

Somewhere in Southern Indiana: Poems of Midwestern Origins

The Country I Come From

Sweet Sister Moon