A Journey Home
C.W. Post Poet Laureate Collaborates on Book Celebrating Indiana

Take a stroll on one of Indiana’s charming back roads. Explore the lush fields, rustic barnyards and small towns that dot the landscape of the Midwest in a spiritual journey led by poet Norbert Krapf and photographer Darryl Jones.

Evocative poetry and unforgettable images come together in the book, “Invisible Presence: A Walk Through Indiana in Photographs and Poems,” (Indiana University Press, Quarry Books, $39.95), a unique collaboration that explores Midwestern life and heritage. Jones’ Polaroid manipulations and transfers of Indiana scenes, which resemble Impressionist paintings or watercolors, and Dr. Krapf’s meditative poems in response, take the reader on a spiritual journey through a familiar landscape that reveals the “invisible presence” of a higher reality underlying everyday Midwestern life. 

Dr. Krapf, Poet Laureate and Professor Emeritus of English at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, returned to his native Indiana in 2004 after living in New York for more than 34 years. Since Dr. Krapf used a Jones photograph on another poetry collection in 2002, the two have wanted to work together, and Dr. Krapf's return to his home state was the impetus the pair needed.

“To collaborate with an Indiana photographer whose work I admired, not long after I returned to live in Indiana, is a fitting way to celebrate and complete my homecoming,” Dr. Krapf said.

A series of reflections on mortality triggered by Jones’ Polaroid images of nature are balanced by the humor in Dr. Krapf's poems written in the voice of creatures such as cows and steers staring at the idiosyncrasies of human behavior, a sculpted chicken perched atop a pole at the county fair surveying the human drama below, and fields of pumpkins and hay bales determined to revolt against their plight.

“We were on the same path, taking a parallel journey, and his evocative and haunting images served as triggers for my poems, as gateways into the spirit of the place we both love,” Dr. Krapf said.

Jones used a manipulation technique on the photographs to capture the painted feel with dramatic results. “Darryl’s dreamlike, mythic, and timeless Polaroid manipulations and transfers of Indiana scenes provided rich stimulation to my imagination,” Dr. Krapf said.

Dr. Krapf taught at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University from 1970 until 2004, where he is now Professor Emeritus of English and Poet Laureate. He has written or edited 20 books since 1976, 15 of them collections of his poetry, including the recent title, “The Country I Come From,” which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

In April of 2005, Time Being Books released his collection “Looking for God's Country,” 85 poems set in Indiana and Germany. Included is a cycle of 26 poems inspired by the black-and-white photographs of Franconian photographer Andreas Riedel. Poet Helmut Haberkamm, who wrote the script for a 2001 Radio Bavaria feature on Norbert Krapf's search for his Franconian roots, has translated many of Dr. Krapf's poems into German.

For information, contact the C.W. Post Office of Public Relations at (516) 299-2334. For information about Dr. Krapf and his works, visit http://www.krapfpoetry.com.

Posted: September 12, 2006