Norbert Krapf's 'Catholic Boy Blues'

Book Review (Poetry)

. . . if you learn how to listen to the deepest part

of yourself, that’s where the most important words

that are yours come from. . . .

~ Poet and Writer Norbert Krapf

Cover Image of Norbert Krapf as Youth, 1950s. Taken by Krapf’s Pastor and Given to Krapf’s Parents

For former Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf, it took nearly 50 years of listening to the deepest, locked-away part of himself to address the profound abuse to which his Catholic parish priest subjected him when Krapf was a child. During the period of that abuse, the priest took the photograph that became part of the cover art for Krapf’s 2014 autobiographical collection Catholic Boy Blues (Greystone Publishing), and gave it to Krapf’s parents. That haunting photograph, an evocative visualization of the painful words comprising Krapf’s poems, contains both dark secret and starker truth. Krapf wrestles with both over the course of his four-part collection by assuming four dramatically different yet intertwined voices: the boy …