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.
Harold Norse
Norse in 1988
Born
(1916-07-06)July 6, 1916 New York City, U.S.
Died
June 8, 2009(2009-06-08) (aged 92) San Francisco, California, U.S.
Born Harold Rosen to an unmarried Lithuanian Jewish immigrant in Brooklyn.[1] In the early 1950s, he came up with the new last name, Norse, by rearranging the letters in Rosen.[2]
He received his B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1938, where he edited the literary magazine.[3] 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.[4] Soon Norse was publishing in Poetry,The Saturday Review and The Paris Review.[5] 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.
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?)
Referencesedit
^"Norse, Harold", glbtq, on line. Archived October 19, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
^"Harold Norse, a Beat Poet, Dies at 92", The New York Times, Saturday, June 13, 2009, p A15.
^Peter Fimrite, "Beat poet Harold Norse dies at 92", San Francisco Chronicle (June 14, 2009)
^The American Idiom: A Correspondence, with William Carlos Williams (San Francisco: Bright Tyger Press, 1990) ISBN 0-944378-79-X
^ abWilliam Grimes (June 13, 2009). "Harold Norse, a Beat Poet, Dies at 92". The New York Times.
^Beat Hotel German tr. Maro Verlag, Augsburg, West Germany (1975); in the original English, Atticus Press (1983) ISBN 0-912377-01-1.
^ abElaine Woo (June 13, 2009). "Harold Norse dies at 92; Beat poet was a literary beacon in the gay community". Los Angeles Times.
^Peter Fimrite (June 14, 2009). "Beat poet Harold Norse dies at 92". The San Francisco Chronicle.
^The Return of the Bastard Angel by Mark Athitakis, SF Weekly, November 8, 2000
^Grimes, William (June 14, 2009). "Harold Norse, Beat poet had explored gay identity". Boston.com.