Somewhere in Southern Indiana: Poems of Midwestern Origins [Paperback]

Norbert Krapf (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1993

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Krapf's poetry has deep affinities with the local color tradition of American literature. But like Kentucky poet Wendell Berry, Krapf's forte is in recognizing the spiritual interaction between a people and their place....For Krapf, the relationship is that of a son who has been much blessed through the sacredness of place and familial love. --The Sycamore Review

Norbert Krapf is blessed with the haunting beauty of his childhood....Family and friends crowd upon him, gentle men and women, hard working farmers straight out of gracious but impoverished Germany of the Nineteenth century. They are his roots in being, and he pays them deep, discerning love and gratitude for who they were and are to him still, strengthened in himself as man and poet because of them. Somewhere in Southern Indiana...is a book of rural psalms. --David Ignatow, author of Against the Evidence: Selected Poems 1934-1994

About the Author

Norbert Krapf grew up in Jasper, Indiana, a German community, and taught, from 1970 to 2004, at Long Island University, where he directed the C. W. Post Poetry Center for eighteen years. He now lives in Indianapolis. A graduate of St. Joseph's College (Rensselaer, Indiana), which awarded him an honorary doctorate, he received his M.A. and Ph.D. in English and American Literature from the University of Notre Dame. His poetry volumes include the trilogy Somewhere in Southern Indiana, Blue-Eyed Grass: Poems of Germany, and Bittersweet Along the Expressway: Poems of Long Island, as well as the recent The Country I Come From, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He is the editor of Finding the Grain, a collection of pioneer German journals and letters from his native Dubois County, and Under Open Sky, a gathering of writings, by contemporary American poets, on William Cullen Bryant. He is also the translator/editor of Shadows on the Sundial: Selected Early Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke and Beneath the Cherry Sapling: Legends from Franconia. Winner of the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, he has been a U.S. Exchange Teacher at West Oxon Technical College, England, and Fulbright Professor of American Poetry at the Universities of Freiburg and Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.

Product Details

• Paperback: 107 pages
• Publisher: Time Being Books (May 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1877770906
• ISBN-13: 978-1877770906
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,054,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An outstanding gift!, June 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Somewhere in Southern Indiana: Poems of Midwestern Origins (Hardcover)

I received this as a college graduation gift as I was leaving my Southern Indiana home. I have treasured it since. And, it makes a great "coffee table" book.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review Excerpts, January 25, 1998

By 

Norbert Krapf (Indianapolis, IN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Somewhere in Southern Indiana: Poems of Midwestern Origins (Paperback)

"With poet David Ignatow you may call Krapf's work 'a book of rural psalms' that celebrates the chain of generations past and still unborn. No doubt, Norbert Krapf is today's strongest poetic voice in search of German heritage," German Life; "Although these poems are deeply rooted in the ...lives of Krapf's German-Catholic ancestors, their ultimate concerns are what Faulkner called the 'old universal truths' of 'love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice,'" Arts Indiana; "With its emphasis on the specifiities of a place and its people, Krapf's poetry had deep affinities with the local color tradition of American literature. But like Kentucky poet Wendell Berry, Krapf's fore is in recognizing the spiritual interaaction between a people and their place," Sycamore Review; "The mix of sunny and dark images places the poet in a Frostian tradition as well as a Whitmanian one; Krapf's poems reverbate with the mystery of human character at the core of his family roots."