An important work for the nineteenth century history of East Africa. It contains a new introduction with a biographical sketch of Krapf.

“In these 101 poems Norbert Krapf explores the richness of his ancestry . . . a book that confirms Krapf’s status as one of America’s finest living poets.” —Benjamin Hedin, author of Under the Spell A collaboration born of a shared love of music, photography, poetry, and Indiana, this book celebrates the history, literature, and art that informs the present and shapes our identity. Richard Fields’s black and white photos are evocative imaginings of Norbert Krapf’s poems, visual metaphors that extend and deepen their vision. Krapf’s poems pay tribute to poets from Homer and Virgil to Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Wendell Berry, and to singer-songwriters such as Woody Guthrie and John Lennon. They also explore the poet’s German heritage, question ethnic prejudice and social conflict, and praise the natural world. The book includes a cycle of 15 poems about Bob Dylan; a public poem written in response to 9/11, “Prayer to Walt Whitman at Ground Zero”; “Back Home,” a poem reproduced in a stained glass panel at the Indianapolis airport; and ruminations on the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, “Questions on a Wall.” “Pursuing a tri-fold creative concept that unites poetry, art in the form of photography, and music is certainly not a light challenge. Norbert Krapf has mastered it with remarkable virtuosity and once again reinforced his reputation as the pre-eminent German-American poet of the English language.” —Yearbook of German-American Studies “Some of Krapf’s poetry is breathtakingly moving. Most of it is very insightful . . . The way he joins history and emotion is wonderful.” —Englewood Review of Books

In this, the third book of Phillip H. Krapf's series, the story of a year-long series of dramatic materializations of a guardian angel named Paul is told. Often confounded by what he is seeing and hearing, Krapf learns that Paul has journeyed with him for a lifetime, beneficially guiding and protecting him without his knowledge.

Dunton-Downer offers a lively look at the history of the English language through an in-depth study of 50 words that are now part of the global lexicon.

Norbert Krapf, past Indiana Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize nominee, emeritus prof. of English at Long Island University, and author of twenty-five critically acclaimed books, has written a new book, "Catholic Boy Blues: A Poet's Journal of Healing." Norbert is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. After fifty years of struggling with his past, he felt that by confronting it in writing, he could offer fellow victims comfort, healing, and a sense of freedom from the long-term effects of abuse. He also believed that the book, seven years in the making, could help caregivers who counsel and minister to survivors of abuse. "Catholic Boy Blues" gives insight and encouragement to those who have not yet confronted their abuse and to friends and family members who want to understand better the long-term effects of abuse. After Norbert began to write about the emotional turmoil which affected him, his feelings of betrayal by God and Church, and his years of troubled silence, he experienced healing and a renewal of spirit. The 130 poems he selected from the 325 he wrote came in four voices: the boy he was, the man he became, Mr. Blues (a fictional friend, mentor, and counselor), and the Priest. The honesty and power of Norbert's words convey representative emotions and thoughts of those abused. Although the poems aren't always pleasant, they give the reader a vivid look at the helplessness, anger, betrayal, and isolation any victim suffers, but in the end, as Jason Berry says, "Norbert Krapf fuses the rolling wisdom of blues singers with incantations of his own past that echo sacred ritual. Along the way he turns trauma into elegy, and takes suffering to a plateau of human triumph."