Norbert Krapf: "The Blueberry Bush"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Norbert Krapf’s “The Blueberry Bush,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue (Volume VII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Norbert Krapf has written or edited 21 books, two of which are his translations from the German. Sixteen of these books are collections of his own poetry, including Somewhere in Southern Indiana: Poems of Midwestern Origins (1993), Blue-Eyed Grass: Poems of Germany (1997), and Looking for God’s Country (2005), all available from Time Being Books, and Bittersweet Along the Expressway: Poems of Long Island (2000) and The Country I Come From (2002). In 2006, Indiana University Press published Invisible Presence, a collaboration with Indiana photographer Darryl Jones.

Krapf is the editor/translator of Beneath the Cherry Sapling: Legends from Franconia (1988), a collection of folk tales set in his ancestral region, and Shadows on the Sundial: Selected Early Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke (1990). He is also the editor of Under Open Sky: Poets on William Cullen Bryant (1986). In December 2007, Acme Records released Norbert Krapf and jazz pianist-composer Monika Herzig’s CD, Imagine—Indiana in Music and Words. Krapf’s honors include the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. For 34 years he taught at Long Island University, where he directed the C.W. Post Poetry Center. Earlier this year, Norbert Krapf was named the Poet Laureate of Indiana.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an exceptional work by a poet selected from the archives of Valparaiso Poetry Review with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.