Harold Norse

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Harold Norse (born July 6, 1916 in New York City) is an American writer, who has created a body of work using the American idiom of everyday language and images. One of the expatriate artists of the Beat generation, Norse has been widely published and anthologized.

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. From 1954-59 he lived in Italy. He penned the experimental cut-up novel Beat Hotel in 1960 while living in Paris with William 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^[1] award winner. He has lived in the Mission District of San Francisco for the last 35 years.

[edit] Works

In the Hub of the Fiery Force, Collected Poems of Harold Norse 1934-2003, New York, Thunder's Mouth, (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. William Morrow (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)

[edit] 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.