Now living in retirement in his native Indiana, former Roslyn resident Norbert Krapf continues to stay busy. Currently poet laureate of Indiana, Krapf has now published Bloodroot, a volume that showcases poetry from Krapf's work over the past 35 years.

According to its publisher, poems in Bloodroot pay homage to Krapf's experiences living in southern Indiana, and the intersection of life with his German ancestry.

Krapf himself adds that the collection "brings together the essential poems rooted in [his] native place that engage the details of the natural and human history--the external and internal cosmos--of the landscape that [he] was given as a birthright."

In all, 175 poems, with 40 being published for the first time, are accompanied by the evocative photographs of David Pierini.

Although Bloodroot emphasizes Krapf's Indiana poems, the collection also includes poetry from a 2000 collection, Bittersweet Along The Expressway, which features poetry from Krapf's years in Roslyn with such titles as Sycamore on Main Street, The Roslyn Forge, and Gatsby Country.

Bloodroot is a thick book of poetry, checking in at 281 pages. That is due mostly to the large number of poems, but also to the numerous photographs by David Pierini, nearly all of which capture scenes from life in southern Indiana. That includes shots of boys playing Little League baseball, high school football games, cemeteries, hog scaldings, a father and son hunting expedition, abandoned farmhouses, church services, and various scenes from the farming life, plus a basketball goal in the cornfields, the quintessential Indiana snapshot.

Bloodroot has received advance praise from various quarters. James Alexander Thom writes: "The test of 'poetry of place' is whether it feels perfectly familiar to a reader who lives there. I'm a southern Indiana native who feels right at home in Norbert Krapf's poems."

Adds Robert Phillips: "Norbert Krapf is one of our distinguished and moving American poets. The new poems seem among his best."

A longtime professor of English at Long Island University, Krapf is a Pulitzer Prize nominee. His recent work includes the childhood memoir The Ripest Moments: Invisible Presence, a collaboration with the photographer Darryl Jones and a jazz and poetry CD with Monika Herzig, Imagine: Indiana in Music and Words.

Krapf's collaborator, David Pierini, is also a native of southern Indiana. A staff photographer for The Herald in Jasper, IN, he was named Newspaper Photographer of the Year in 2003 and 2006 by the Indiana News Photographers Association and has won several state and national awards for photography and photo editing. His work has appeared in several national magazines and three books: America 24/7 and Indiana 24/7 by Rick Smolan and David Elliot Cohen, and Photosynthesis by Bryan Moss.