Harold Norse

Harold Norse (July 6, 1916, New York City – June 8, 2009, San Francisco) was an 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 ==Born Harold Rosen to an unmarried Lithuanian Jewish immigrant in Brooklyn. In the early 1950s, he came up with the new last name, Norse, by rearranging the letters in Rosen  He received his B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1938, where he edited the literary magazine. Norse met Chester Kallman in 1938, and then became a part of W. H. Auden's "inner circle" when Auden moved to the U.S. in 1939. (Kallman and Auden later became lifelong partners.) However, Norse soon found himself allied with William Carlos Williams, who rated Norse the 'best poet of [his] generation.'  Norse broke with traditional verse forms and embraced a more direct, conversational language. Soon Norse was publishing in Poetry, The Saturday Review and The Paris Review.  He got his master's degree in literature from New York University in 1951. His first book of poems, The Undersea Mountain, was published in 1953. From 1954-59 Norse lived and wrote 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 from 1959 to 1963. He traveled to Tangier, where he stayed with Jane and Paul Bowles. Returning to America in 1968, Norse arrived in Venice, California, near Charles Bukowski. He moved to San Francisco in 1972 and lived in the Mission District of San Francisco for the last 35 years of his life. Memoirs of a Bastard Angel traces Norse's life and literary career with 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 Anaïs 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. == Works ==* In the Hub of the Fiery Force, Collected Poems of Harold Norse 1934-2003, New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003* The American Idiom: A Correspondence, with William Carlos Williams, San Francisco: Bright Tyger Press, 1990* Memoirs of a Bastard Angel, preface by James Baldwin, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1989* The Love Poems 1940-1985, Trumansburg, New York: The Crossing Press, 1986* Mysteries of Magritte, San Diego: Atticus Press, 1984* Carnivorous Saint: Gay Poems 1941-1976, San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1977* Beat Hotel, German translation by Carl Weissner, Augsburg, Federal Republic of Germany: Maro Verlag, 1975** Beat Hotel (the English original), San Diego: Atticus Press, 1983** Beat Hotel, Italian translation by Giulio Saponaro, Italy: Stamperia della Frontiera, 1985* Hotel Nirvana, San Francisco: City Lights, 1974* Karma Circuit, San Francisco: Panjandrum Press, 1973* Charles Bukowski, Philip Lamantia and Harold Norse, Penguin Modern Poets 13., Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969* Karma Circuit, London: Nothing Doing in London, 1966* The Dancing Beasts, New York: Macmillan, 1962* The Roman Sonnets of Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, Jargon 38, 1960; London, Villiers, 1974* The Undersea Mountain, Denver: Swallow Press, 1953 == Anthologies ==*New Directions 13, ed. James Laughlin, 1951*Mentor, New American Library, 1958*City Lights Journal, ed. L. Ferlinghetti, #1, 1963*Best Poems of 1968: Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards, ed. Hildegarde Flanner, 1969*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*Gay and Lesbian Poetry In Our Time: An Anthology, ed. Carl Morse and Joan Larkin, St. Martin's Press, 1988*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*The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, ed. Alan Kaufman and S.A. Griffin, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1999 == Resources ==* The Harold Norse Papers (1934–1980, 8,000 items) are archived at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington. * Harold Norse, James Baldwin, Anais Nin, William S. Burroughs, William Carlos Williams, Paul Carroll, Jack Hirschman, "Harold Norse Special Issue", Olé, No. 5 (Bensenville, IL: Open Skull Press, n.d., 1966?) == References == == External links ==*haroldnorse.com, Memorial Web site with poems and photos**Beat museum: "Harold Norse"*Biography, with bibliography*Harold Norse entry at Web site devoted to glbtq culture*Harold Norse Collection*L.A. Times Obituary*N.Y. Times Obituary*S.F. Chronicle Obituary*Guardian U.K. Obituary*Remembering Harold Norse