Norbert Krapf, Indiana Poet Laureate 2008-10 and winner of the Glick Indiana Author Award (regional) 2014, is the author of eleven poetry collections, including Catholic Boy Blues: A Poet’s Journal of Healing (2014), American Dreams: Reveries and Revisitations (2013), and Songs in Sepia and Black and White, and the retrospective Bloodroot: Indiana Poems. He has released a poetry and jazz CD with Monika Herzig, Imagine (2007) and collaborates with Indiana bluesman Gordon Bonham. As IPL, he promoted collaborations and the reunion of poetry and song. He was a Creative Renewal Fellow 2011-12 with the Arts Council of Indianapolis with a project of combining poetry and blues. He lives with his family in Indianapolis. For more info, including audio and video files, book descriptions, and photos, visit here.---------
Solo for Sonny Boy Williamson
Sonny Boy, I see at my side the tufts
of cotton I picked near your grave
deep in the Delta outside little Tutwiler
in which they say the blues were born
near the train station where W.C. Handy heard
a man slide a knife blade along his guitar string
and sing twice over “Where the Southern
cross the Yellow Dog.” I see in the mirror
of my fading memory a miniature whiskey bottle
next to small harmonicas leaning against your stone
left by your loyal fans who also heard
what I did too, the blue notes you blew
and sucked into your heart and soul
and spewed into the bowl of our ears
like the blood that oozed from your mouth
after you returned home from Chicago to die.
How the Santa Clara Potter’s Hand Prays
—for Jody Naranjo
It lifts reservation clay out of the earth
and turns it into coils it loops
around and shapes into a container
able to hold light within itself.
She places the formed shape into a pit
of wood shavings and manure
that take to flame. When the clay
being emerges red hot from the fire
womb baked like an eternal loaf
that cools and stands on its own
her hand inscribes animal figures that move
around circular sides as tiny lines
come to life breathing with transferred
energy released with love like birds
whose wings lift toward the mountains
beating the rhythm of a hymn of praise
over the valleys cupped to receive
music whose sounds drift earthward.
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Photo Credit: Richard Fields