Harold Norse
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Harold Norse (born July 6, 1916, in New York City, died June 8, 2009 in San Francisco) was an openly gay American writer, who created a body of work using the American idiom of everyday language and images. One of the expatriate artists of the Beat generation, Norse was widely published and anthologized.
Life
Norse became a part of W. H. Auden's "inner circle" at the age of 22, but soon found himself allied with William Carlos Williams, who rated Norse the 'best poet of [his] generation.' From 1954-59 he lived in Italy. He penned the experimental cut-up novel Beat Hotel in 1960 while living in Paris with William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. He returned to live in the U.S. in 1969.
Memoirs of a Bastard Angel traces Norse's life and literary career with W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, E. E. Cummings, Tennessee Williams, William Carlos Williams, James Baldwin, Dylan Thomas, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Paul Bowles, Charles Bukowski, Robert Graves, and Anais Nin. With Carnivorous Saint: Gay Poems 1941-1976 Norse became a leading gay liberation poet. His collected poems, In the Hub of the Fiery Force, appeared in 2003.
Norse is a two-time NEA grant recipient, and National Poetry Association award winner. He has lived in the Mission District of San Francisco for the last 35 years.
Works
- In the Hub of the Fiery Force, Collected Poems of Harold Norse 1934-2003 (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003) ISBN 156025520X
- The American Idiom: A Correspondence, with William Carlos Williams (San Francisco: Bright Tyger Press, 1990) ISBN 094437879X
- Memoirs of a Bastard Angel, preface by James Baldwin (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1989) ISBN 0688067042
- Carnivorous Saint: Gay Poems 1941-1976 (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1977) ISBN 0917342550
- Beat Hotel German tr. Maro Verlag, Augsburg, West Germany (1975); (in original English), Atticus Press (1983),
Preface by William S. Burroughs; Italian tr. Giulio Saponaro, Stamperia della Frontiera, Caneggio, Switzerland (1985).
- Charles Bukowski, Philip Lamantia and Harold Norse, Penguin Modern Poets 13. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969)
- The Dancing Beasts (New York: Macmillan, 1962)
- The Roman Sonnets of Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, Preface by William Carlos Williams and Introduction by Alberto Moravia, Highlands, NC, Jargon (1960); London, Villiers (1974); Van Nuys, CA, Perivale, 1974
- The Undersea Mountain (Denver: Swallow Press, 1953)
Anthologies
- New Directions 13, ed. James Laughlin, 1951
- New World Writing 13, ed. Reed Whittemore
- Mentor, New American Library, 1958
- City Lights Journal, ed. L. Ferlinghetti, #1, 1963
- #4 1978
- Best Poems of 1968: Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards, ed. Hildegarde Flanner, 1969
- Poems from Italy, translations, ed. William Jay Smith, Crowell, 1972
- City Lights Anthology, ed. Ferlinghetti, City Lights 1974
- A Geography of Poets, ed. Edward Field, Bantam 1979
- The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse, ed. Stephen Coote, Penguin 1983
- An Ear to the Ground, ed. Harris & Aguero, University of Chicago Press, 1989
- Big Sky Mind: Buddhism & the Beat Generation, ed. Carole Tonkinson, Riverhead Books, NY, 1995
- City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology, City Lights, 1995
- Mondadori (in Italian), 1997.
