|
Norbert Krapf’s Sweet Sister Moon is luxuriant with the grace of the feminine
spirit, in the natural world, in history, in art and music, and in memory. These
sixty-seven lyric and expansive poems, including two cycles with thirteen and
nineteen sections, encompass that spirit at every turn. The book is divided into
seven sections: The Figure in the Landscape; Woman in a Lavender Field; The
Sister in the Circle; Daughters; Full Moon over Central Indiana; Her Circle;
Songs of Helga: After Andrew Wyeth. In the words
of poet and memoirist Colette Inez, “In a deftly orchestrated collection of
mixed voices, down-home sensual, jazzy, elegant and spare, Norbert Krapf
blesses
the
women in his life: mother, wife, daughter,
singers, sisters, familial and social…Folk
song echoes reverberate in this book composed in the American grain
and offering a loving world that marks a new range in this well-praised
poet’s career.”
|
Women
Authors on Sweet Sister Moon |
|
“In a deftly orchestrated collection of mixed voices, down-home sensual, jazzy,
elegant and spare, Norbert Krapf blesses the women in his life: mother, wife,
daughter, old flames, singers, sisters, familial and social. A touching
meditation on the brief presence of an unborn sister explores the mystery of
creation. Krapf is mindful of feminine curves in the body of the land, Daphne,
and goddesses of nature. Poets are summoned: Walt Whitman and his fictive
daughters, Emily Dickinson, whose baked bread leaves us with its fresh aura. So,
too, does the poet’s tribute to painter Andrew Wyeth in the stately ‘Helga
Songs.’ On the other side of the country, a Diné woman (Navajo) glows in an
ambitious sequence celebrating native rites. Turned to more playful cadences,
jazz greats pull out their stops; Bessie Smith, Billie, Ma Rainey and Cassandra
singing ‘a mean country heartbreak.’ Folk song echoes reverberate in this book
composed in the American grain and offering a loving world that marks a new
range in this well-praised poet’s career.” |
|
—Colette Inez |
| “Sweet Sister Moon, a courageous exploration of women’s lives, does what only
great poetry can do. It gifts the reader with new sight, transforming the
ordinary into something exquisite, precious, worthy of honor. This book is a
timely contribution to the struggle to heal a culture that has marginalized
women’s experiences.” |
|
—Demetria Martinez |
| “In these poems, Indiana Poet
Laureate Norbert Krapf celebrates the universal
feminine in the particular: in the stunningly observed paintings of Helga by
Andrew Wyeth and in his own love for wife and daughter, for music and friends,
and for the rolling hills of the Midwestern landscape.” |
|
—Susan Neville |
Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf is a native of Jasper, Indiana, a German
community. He received his B.A. from St. Joseph College (Indiana) and his M.A.
and Ph.D. in English from the University of Notre Dame. After thirty-four years
of teaching at Long Island University, where he directed the C.W. Post Poetry
Center, he moved with his family to Indianapolis in 2004.
Since then he has published the poetry collections
Looking for God’s Country
(Time Being Books, 2005); Invisible Presence: A Walk through Indiana in
Photographs and Poems (Indiana Univ. Pr., 2006), with Darryl Jones; Bloodroot:
Indiana Poems (Indiana Univ. Pr., 2008), with b/w photographs by David Pierini;
a prose memoir The Ripest Moments: A Southern Indiana Childhood (Indiana
Historical Society Pr., 2008), with 74 period photographs; and a CD with jazz
pianist and composer Monika Herzig, Imagine - Indiana in Music and Words (Acme
Records, 2007).
Krapf received the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of
America and serves on the board of Etheridge Knight, Inc., which brings the arts
to those traditionally underserved. As IPL, he has a special interest in
reuniting poetry and music,
and he is working with
The Cabaret at the Connoisseur Room in Indianapolis to accomplish that goal. For more details, go to www.krapfpoetry.net. |
