Catholic Boy Blues: A Poet's Journal of Healing

Ultimately hope-filled and healing. Norbert Krapf, Indiana Poet Laureate from 2008-2010, was abused fifty years ago as a young boy by his family's parish priest. Like many survivors, he spent a lifetime trying to put the experience behind him, telling his wife in general terms, but no one else, what had happened to him. Recently, however, when he read that a different priest, accused of abusing boys in three Indiana parishes, had been transferred to a parish near the author's childhood home, Krapf decided he had to go public. He did so in the only way he knew. He wrote poetry. "It began to come," he says, "with volcanic force, night and day." Krapf discovered four distinct "voices" in these poems: the boy he was, the man he became, his imaginary friend and mentor Mr. Blues, and the priest who abused him. Each voice seeks to explain himself in poetic, albeit sometimes graphic, language. The author's experience as captured in this book is the subject of a PBS documentary and is being considered as the basis for a play. Catholic Boy Blues is not for the faint of heart nor for those who simply wish to "move on" from the current and historical reality regarding the abuse of children. This collection of moving poems offers anyone-including those in positions of authority and trust with children-a path toward understanding, hope, and healing. Book jacket.