Bloodroot: Indiana Poems

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.

Table of Contents:
CONTENTS: Poems List I. Somewhere in Southern Indiana (1993) The Forefather Arrives Entering the Southern Indiana Wilderness Butchering Cutting Wood The Woods of Southern Indiana Indigo Bunting Chamomile Purple Trillium Tulip Poplar Walnut Skinning a Rabbit Darkness Comes to the Woods Southern Indiana St. Meinrad Archabbey To Obscure men Two Bricks and a Board My Father Young Again A Terre Haute Story Hoosier Songs Sisters A Civil War Veteran from Indiana Flight For an Old Friend Basketball Season Begins Somewhere in Southern Indiana II. Bittersweet Along the Expressway (2000) Arriving on Paumanok Sycamore on Main Street Ancestral Voices Weeping Willow Dogwood Gatsby Country The Roslyn Forge Song of the Music Stand A Midwestern Story A Dream of Plum Blossoms III. The Country I Come From (2002) A Whiff of Fresh Sheets Full Circle The Language of Place The Language of Species What We Lost in Southern Indiana The Buffalo Trace What the Miami Call Themselves Song of the Mississinewa Mississinewa River Lament Mississinewa Cottonwood Leaf Lines Heard in Northern Indiana Cornfields Mayapple Fire and Ice One Voice from Many Pastoral Poetics The Corn Cave Hauling Hay Hayloft Milk Music The Labor Day Boxes The Horseradish Man When the House Was New Woods Hymn Bloodroot His Only Hickory Sapling The Martin Box The Potato Barrows Gathering Hickory Nuts The Quilters Saturday Night at the Calumet Because I Could Not Stop Song for Bob Dylan Odysseus in Indiana Return to a Mighty Fortress Song for a Sister The Dropped Pigskin Dream of a Hanging Curve Dorothy and the Jewish Coat The Mandolin and the Tenor Let Morning Light Hugging the Spirit Farewell Lullaby At Least Now The Reunion Places IV. Looking for God's Country (2005) Letter from a Star Above Southern Indiana The Nest Strawberry-Patch Song The Gardener Chicken in the Woods Godfather's Fishing Knife Patoka River Canoe Trip Barnyard Hoops The Schneebrunzer What the Map Says God's Country The Storyteller Where Trees Are Tall The Piankashaw in the Sycamore Coming into the Valley Dark and Deep Moon Shadow The Time Has Come V. Invisible Presence (2006) Gate The Language of Red Corn Blowing in the Wind The Blue Road The Space Between Bovine Beauty Corn Syllables Cut Earth Morel Cabin Whitman's Web Deaton's Woods Woods Meditation David Ignatow's Trees Bare Tree Song Tale of the Red Barn Two Kittens Midwestern Scene A Red Barn for the Joads What's in Wood? I Remember When Close Look Flower Interior Rilke's Shadow Army of Orange Left in a House What If Fish? For Whom the Bell? Picket Fence Rest Walking the Streets Windows The Court House Bench The Man in the Red Cap Neighborhood Muse Hoosier Poetry Reading Song of the Red Covered Bridge VI. Local News: Poems 2005-2007 Sister Soap Clothesline Saga Charlie Little Red Worms from Tennessee Dolls and Guns The Local News Two Bottles of Beer Cemetery Wind The Egg in My Hand Lindauer's Woods Father, Teach Me Old Henry Wilson's Drugstore Rockroading The Rustic Tavern Sister Query Fishing Again After Many Years Patoka River Carp The Blueberry Bush Call of the Quail The Rosary Silent Prayer Eighth Anniversary Brother, Brother Indiana Sycamore Patoka Lake Morning Woods Chapel Palm Light Bend in the Road In Transit Prayer for Peyton Manning Fiddler I'm Practically with the Band What Have You Gone and Done? On the Road with the Hampton Sisters Etheridge Knight's Blues Etheridge Knight at the Chatterbox Song Out of Darkness for Jake Hale For Kurt Vonnegut, Pilgrim Unstuck in Time Spring Waters

About the Author :
Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf was Professor of English at Long Island University from 1970 47to 2004. His books include The Country I Come From: Poems and Invisible Presence: A Walk through Indiana in Photographs and Poems, a collaboration with photographer Darryl Jones (IUP 2006). He lives in Indianapolis, Indiana. David Pierini is a staff photographer for The Herald newspaper in Jasper, Indiana. He was named Newspaper Photographer of the Year in 2003 and 2006 by the Indiana News Photographers Association. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Review :
"The test of 'poetry of place' is whether it feels perfectly familiar to a reader who lives there. I'm a Southern Indiana native who feels right at home in Norbert Krapf's poems." James Alexander Thom "Norbert Krapf is one of our distinguished and moving American poets. The new poems seem among his best." Robert Phillips