Harold Norse

A poet and memoirist, Harold Norse is best known for his associations with the Beat Generation and the gay liberation movement. Mentored by William Carlos Williams, Norse wrote poetry that employs the American idiom of everyday speech to reflect on themes of travel, identity, and sexuality. Williams once called Norse “the best poet of his generation.”

Born Harold Rosen, which he later rearranged as “Norse,” Harold grew up in a poor Brooklyn neighborhood. Norse recalled his childhood in his autobiography, Memoirs of a Bastard Angel: A Fifty-Year Literary and Erotic Odyssey (1989, William Morrow & Company); the title refers to his illegitimacy. Norse graduated from Brooklyn College in 1938 and became part of W.H. Auden’s circle, later collaborating with Julian Beck and Judith Malina through The Living Theatre. Norse’s early work included publications in Poetry magazine, such as “Three Voyages,” and Saturday Review; his first collection, The Undersea Mountain, was published in 1953 by Alan Swallow. 

Frustrated with the New York poetry scene, which he believed was held back by the influence of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, Norse spent 15 years in Europe and North Africa. Between 1960 and 1963, he lived at what became known as the “Beat Hotel” in the Latin quarter of Paris, along with William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and Allen Ginsberg. There Norse developed a series of ink drawings called “cosmographs” and collaborated with Brion Gysin and Burroughs on cut-up writing projects. Norse’s cut-up novella, Beat Hotel, was published in 1983 by Atticus Press.

During the 1960s, Norse’s work was published in the little magazines associated with the Mimeograph Revolution, among them Residu and Olé. His return to the United States in the early 1970s was productive, including the City Lights publication of Hotel Nirvana: Selected poems, 1953-1973 to critical acclaim. After the publication of Carnivorous Saint: Gay Poems, 1941-1976, Norse established himself as a leading gay liberation poet in San Francisco, where he lived until his death in 2009.

Biography by Douglas Field