Songs for All Souls resonates with an invitation to explore sacred space, offering moments of awe and wonder. Krapf’s poems become a source of solace, a conduit for unburdening sorrow, hurt, and even anger, fostering a profound sense of peace and joy through the act of prayer. Within the lyrical tapestry of this collection, readers are encouraged to perceive the world with fresh eyes, learning a new language for prayer that transcends the ordinary.
Krapf’s gift lies in the ability to guide readers through a spiritual awakening, where each poem serves as a beacon of light illuminating the path to understanding, connection, and the renewal of one’s spiritual language. Songs for All Souls becomes a sanctuary for the soul, inviting individuals to find solace and transcendence in the delicate interplay between the earthly and the divine.
Norbert Krapf’s Songs for All Souls offers us a Book of Prayer whereby we are able to enter “the garden as the veil between us and spirits stretches thin.” We enter that space of the Divine, gazing in wonder at the love with which our God embraces us and our loved ones. May we find peace and joy as we unburden our sorrow and hurt, even anger, when we pray and “see with the help of the light . . . with new eyes.” Norbert’s poems help us learn “a new language for prayer.”
Father Larry Richardt
Here Norbert Krapf gifts us with psalms for our time with a depth and clarity that touches the heart. These psalms sing with poignancy and simplicity and directness-just as do the original psalms of David. They speak with immediacy of every-day experiences we all can share in-celebrating the planting of tomatoes, lunching in cemeteries with the kids, listening to Divinity sing, observing that being interwoven means we are of one cloth. From “Garden Liturgies” to “Gods and Religion,” from grief to hope and back again, we are invited into deepened states of awareness and contemplation.
Matthew Fox, recipient of the Abbey Courage of Conscience Peace Award, author of Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God
As the powerful opening poem indicates, these are poems about the search for communion-with the spirit world, with nature, with those we love in their present or eternal forms. Krapf takes us along as he searches for revelation in the quotidian, ultimately, and sometimes obliquely, seeking a communion with God. As you read them, these poems become “the kind of prayer that transforms us into flame.”
Sonia Gernes, poet, Professor Emerita of English at the University of Notre Dame
Norbert Krapf
is a former Indiana Poet Laureate. He has a poem in stained glass at Indianapolis International Airport. He has received the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Creative Renewal Fellowship from the Arts Council of Indianapolis, and a Glick Indiana Author Award. He performs poetry and blues with Indiana bluesman Gordon Bonham.