Neeli Cherkovski reads from the work of his friend and fellow poet Hal Norse at Bird & Beckett Books 12/3/14. Photo by Tate Swindell.
One of the highlights from the first release event for I Am Going to Fly Through Glass was the opportunity to listen to Neeli Cherkovski share stories from his forty year friendship with fellow poet Harold Norse. From their start of their friendship, palling around with Bukowski in Los Angeles in the late 1960s to Harold helping Neeli come out as a gay man in mid–1970s San Francisco, their relationship as friends and fellow poets continued to blossom through their grey years. Here’s a clip of Neeli talking about those times.
Poets Neeli Cherkovski & Harold Norse in the basement of City Lights following the publication of Norse’s Hotel Nirvana in the Pocket Poets Series. Photo by Raymond Foye.
In 1968 Harold returned from fifteen years in Europe to Venice, CA where he was met by a young Neeli and his friend Charles Bukowski. Neeli shared a great story of the three of them out to dinner one night. Carnivores Neeli and Bukowski were chowing down on t-bone steaks while Harold noshed on a salad. Bukowski’s competitive nature edged him to growl at Harold, “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you eat like a man?” Harold. still chewing his salad, replied in his Brooklyn accent, “Let’s see who lives longer.” Neeli’s summation–– “Needless to say it was my dear friend.” Neeli wrote a poem about Harold’s survival as an elder poet titled “Slicing Avocados” where Harold advises “you have to eat like a rabbit/in order to survive.” More of these wonderful anecdotes are included in Neeli’s brilliant introduction to the new collection of Harold’s poetry.
After Walt Whitman, one of the greatest influences on both Neeli and Harold was William Carlos Williams whose poetry broke from academic convention to celebrate common American speech. In the early 1950s, Williams singled out Harold amongst the upcoming Beat poets and acted as a mentor, encouraging him to write in the American idiom. Their correspondence was collected and later published under that title. It remains an insightful document worth searching out. In this last clip Neeli reads, from the selected edition, Harold’s poem “William Carlos Williams” which he characterizes as “one of the greatest tributes from one poet to another.”
The Bay Area is still host to a good number of bookstores in defiance to the culture of digitization. I Am Going to Fly Through Glass: The Selected Poems of Harold Norse is now available at a number of Bay Area bookstores. I heartily recommend Bird & Beckett Books and Records who hosted the first release event to celebrate the book’s publication.
Books, Inc. stocks the title at two of their locations at Opera Plaza and The Castro. In the Mission District the book is available on Valencia Street at Dog Eared Books and on 24th Street at Alley Cat Books. For those who live in the East Bay, the Oakland location of Diesel, A Bookstore sells the book.
I strongly encourage readers who are geographically unable to visit these stores to consider ordering a copy from their website. It’s vital that lovers of poetry support independent bookstores. Additionally, if there is a location that you think could be a good place for carrying the book please let me know or, better still, give them a call and ask them to stock it.
Let me start by thanking Eric Whittington at Bird & Beckett Books and Records for hosting the first release event for the selected edition of Harold Norse’s poems. It’s a great store which hosts many events each month from book readings to live Jazz performances. A festive crowd of thirty folks gathered last Wednesday to celebrate the first publication of Harold’s writing since his death five years ago.
A festive crowd gathers at Bird & Beckett Books for a poetry reading to celebrate the release of “I Am Going to Fly Through Glass” on 12/3/14. Photo by Tate Swindell.
I began the evening by touching upon what lead me to publish a new collection of Harold’s poetry and the inspiration I drew from similar attention that’s being paid to some of his contemporaries. This was followed with some of my favorite poems from Harold including “Now I’m in Vence” and “California Will Sink”.
Neeli Cherkovski entertained the crowd with a number of his lively anecdotes of his the forty years from their friendship and read some of Harold’s best loved poems such as “Classic Frieze in a Garage” and “To Mohammed at the Café Central”. Neeli’s contribution was so great that in the coming days I’ll do a separate post about it.
Neeli Cherkovski reads from the work of his friend and fellow poet Harold Norse at Bird & Beckett Books 12/3/14. Photo by Tate Swindell.
Jim Nawrocki told of first meeting Hal, as he was called by his friends, after reviewing the reprint of his memoirs for the Bay Area Reporter. Jim was so taken by the book’s storytelling personality that he looked up Harold’s name in the phone book and gave him a call. “The voice [on the phone] sounded just like the book,” Jim warmly recalled. From there grew a rich connection that saw Jim make a significant contribution to the publication of Harold’s Collected Poems in 2003. Among the poems Jim read were “I Would Not Recommend Love” and a moving rendition of “I Am Not a Man”.
Writer Jim Nawrocki reads from the work of his friend Harold Norse at Bird & Beckett Books 12/3/14. Photo by Tate Swindell.
Here’s a short video clip of me reading one of my favorite poems of Harold’s which I see as a declaration of the liberation that can arise from discarding society’s prohibitions against pleasure–– “Let Go and Feel Your Nakedness”.
Please join us on December 3rd at 7:00 PM for a poetry reading to celebrate the release of I Am going to Fly Through Glass: The Selected Poems of Harold Norse at Bird and Beckett Books and Records in San Francisco’s Glen Park neighborhood.
The book’s editor Todd Swindell will be joined by San Francisco poets Neeli Cherkovski and Jim Nawrocki. They will be reading from the Selected Poems, in addition to their own work inspired by their friendship with Harold Norse.
For more information about the reading and the book’s release check out this great post from Bird and Beckett at this link. Hope to see you there!
Harold was always proud that his poems had been translated into many languages- Spanish, Italian, German, French- all languages in which he was fluent. Now we can add Greek to that list thanks to Yannis Livadas, whose recent translations, Harold Norse – Poems, with introduction and notes, was published in 2012 by Heridanos Books, Athens.
The cover for Harold Norse – Poems translated into Greek by Yannis Livadas, Heridanos Books, 2012.
Harold arrived on the Greek Islands in 1964, having left Paris after the closing of the Beat Hotel. In Athens he reconnected with poet Charles Henri Ford, whom he knew from their days in Greenwich Village, but it was on the island of Hydra that Harold lived the next couple years. It’s also where he met poet Jack Hirschman, Zina Rachevsky and a young Canadian folksinger named Leonard Cohen. Then an epidemic of hepatitis swept through the island and Harold’s declining health forced him on to Switzerland where he met J. Krishnamurti and shacked up with a Dutch boyfriend.
Harold Norse’s Greek boyfriend Thannis photographed by the poet in 1964.
I asked Yannis about translating Harold’s words into Greek…
“Harold Norse was a hectic and anarchist poet. A poet not only simple assessed as the major voice of a legendary era that is now forever lost; but also as the first American poet who defined the poetic idiom and lifestyle that was followed by the next generations. Norse was a sui generis who affected decisively the contemporary poetry and highlighted the importance of its experiential dynamics. He was one of the most coherent and brilliant poets of his time. Nowadays, although deceased since 2009, Norse remains undeniably one of the greatest voices of modern America; an international, legendary poet of our times. The publishing of a volume with the best of his poems in greek, was more than indispensable.”
“Poet Harold Norse in his apartment kitchen, 157 Albion Street, San Francisco, May 28, 1988 – For HN with old affection from Allen Ginsberg- AH” – Photograph by Allen Ginsberg
I Am Going to Fly Through Glass: The Selected Poems of Harold Norse has received its first write up thanks to the Allen Ginsberg Project. The project, an extension of the Ginsberg estate, features regular updates on all things related to Allen Ginsberg. As richly described in Harold’s Memoirs of a Bastard Angel, he first met a teenage Allen Ginsberg on a deserted, late night New York subway in 1944.
Featuring a cornucopia of photos and web links, the post will hopefully bring some new admirers to Harold’s work. We’re grateful to Peter Hale and Simon Pettet for their accolades to haroldnorse.com and encourage you to visit the Allen Ginsberg Project often.
Harold Norse’s poetry returns to the printed page with I Am Going to Fly Through Glass: The Selected Poems of Harold Norse. Published by Talisman House this first posthumous release, featuring thirteen photos and ninety three poems, covers the breadth of Norse’s poetic work. His close friend and fellow poet Neeli Cherkovski contributes an excellent introduction that encapsulates the incredible life and work of one of 20th century America’s finest poets.
The book is available through Small Press Distribution. Readers are encouraged to purchase the book through a local book store and avoid corporate monoliths such as amazon.
On the occasion of what would have been Harold Norse’s 98th birthday, I have a couple video clips to share after stumbling upon on a Greek YouTube page dedicated to poetry. I’m not aware of the source for these rare clips of Harold interviewed in the side room of his back cottage on Albion Street, where he lived in San Francisco’s Mission district.
The first clip shows Harold talking about the influence of William Carlos Williams on the development of his mature poetic voice. Williams encouraged him to move away from academic poetry and instead follow the spoken language that Harold heard on the streets of his native Brooklyn. Williams called it the American Idiom, which served as the title for the collection of their correspondence.
The clip closes with Harold recounting his first meeting with a then teenage Allen Ginsberg on a deserted, late night New York subway. The full story is descriptively conveyed in Norse’s Memoirs of a Bastard Angel.
In the second clip, Harold reads his famous poem “At the Café Trieste,” composed at the North Beach landmark. Having recently repatriated from fifteen years in Europe and North Africa, Harold describes his return to the West Coast poetry scene from the timeless perspective of the poet.
While your at mpakana’s channel check out some more of the amazing poetry footage including extremely rare clips of North Beach’s great poet Bob Kaufman.
San Francisco poet Alejandro Murguía reads his poem “16th and Valencia” in this short video edited with footage from street protests against the recent killing of Alejandro Neito who was shot in his Bernal Heights neighborhood by the SFPD.
The poem powerfully evokes the anger and resistance that is rising along with the rents in San Francisco. As a mirror to the cultural loss that is part of displacement of gentrification, Murguía invokes the image of writers such as Jack Micheline, Oscar Zeta Ocasta and Harold Norse.
Harold scraped by living in his back cottage on Albion Street near 17th street. This same area has become a prime target for greedy developers seeking to erect a 10-story complex of million dollar condos in place of the BART plaza at 16th and Mission.
If Harold were alive today, he would no longer be able to survive in San Francisco and would surely direct his rage and grief into poetry as moving as Alejandro Murguía’s.
I’m pleased to share news of the release of Harold Norse’s magical cut-up recordings from his time at the Beat Hotel in the early 1960s.
Joining the ranks of his poet friends Ira Cohen, Allen Ginsberg and Eddie Woods, Harold’s recordings are now available from Bart De Paepe’s Sloow Tapes in Belgium under the title Take a Chance In The Void: Harold Norse at the Beat Hotel. This is a cassette only release whose low-fidelity technology is an excellent format for these historic analogue recordings.
Originally recorded on a reel-to-reel tape machine, the cassette features Harold reading from his translations of the satirical sonnets of 19th Century Roman poet G.G. Belli, along with some of his then recent cut-up works. There are also what could be called field recordings of local Parisians telling their tales and singing songs while visiting Harold’s room.
Harold said of the Beat Hotel, “This fleabag shrine will be documented by art historians.” The small hotel, located on Paris’ Left Bank near the Seine river, housed, at various times, Beat writers from Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky to William Burroughs and Gregory Corso, whose residencies coincided with Harold’s.
It was during this time that Harold participated with Burroughs and the painter Brion Gysin in developing the Cut-Up technique. Taking abstract elements from painting, they introduced them into literature by physically cutting up text to produce hallucinatory images freed from the rational mind. This process became the basis of Burroughs’ Nova Trilogy of novels The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded and Nova Express.
Harold’s first cut-up, “Sniffing Keyholes”, singled out by Burroughs and Gysin as a major step in the development of cut-ups, was first published in Ira Cohen’s literary journal GNAOUA. A collection of Harold’s cut-ups were published in the brilliant novella Beat Hotel.
We salute Harold Norse on what would have been the great poet’s 97th birthday, a day shared with visionary painter Frida Kahlo and visionary being the Dali Lama.
Harold lives as long as his poetry is read and his voice remembered. To that end, here’s a poem from Harold’s time in Tangier, breaking through to a new voice, a new man, recalling the visions and ecstasies shared with his young lover.
You can now watch my tribute to Harold Norse from an evening of Writers Remembered earlier this year in San Francisco. After checking it out, have a look at some of the other fantastic presentations from that evening.
The evening of Writers Remembered was held to a packed audience at California College of Arts Writers Studio in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood. Among the twenty-two writers paid tribute were poets such as Janine Pommy Vega, Roberto Valenza and Lenore Kandel.
Here’s a photo of me speaking about Harold taken by Gerald Nicosia, who organized the event.
America Destroys Though Who Create- The Italian Exile of a Brooklyn Bard
I want to dedicate my talk tonight to the visionary Judith Malina and The Living Theater, our country’s oldest experimental theater troupe. They were exiles that performed throughout Europe in the 1960s because of persecution from the IRS. This week the Living Theater closed the doors to its Manhattan performance space, as they could no longer afford the rent. That’s so terribly unjust. Harold Norse was not only a close friend of both Judith and her husband Julian Beck, but was involved in the creation of the Living Theater in 1947. His then lover, Dick Stryker, composed music for many of the Theater’s early productions.
From Gertrude Stein’s modernist prose which flourished in avant-garde Paris of the early 20th Century to the evolution of blues and rock by Jimi Hendrix in the psychedelic scene of 1960’s London, many of America’s most prophetic artists were forced to leave this country in order to find the encouragement and community necessary to voice their visionary creations
Harold Norse was born in Brooklyn, during the summer of 1916, to an unwed Lithuanian Jewish immigrant. Like many others of his generation, he grew up poor during the depression with an abusive stepfather and a superstitious, overbearing mother. Harold was a language prodigy; his heroes were Walt Whitman and Hart Crane. As a student at Brooklyn College, he quickly rose above the fray.
By World War II, Harold was a full participant in the bohemian milieu of Greenwich Village. Among his friends were James Baldwin, W.H. Auden and Paul Goodman. Following a Master’s in English from NYU, Harold was on his way to a PhD and a life in academia.
But 1950’s America was gripped in the clutches of Cold War conformity and its conservative hysteria was particularly dangerous for Harold. Not only was he a liberal and a poet but also queer, all red flags for being labeled a communist. This was the soulless era of validation through collective consumption where the only escapes were the numbness of alcohol & the ecstatic bliss of furtive sexual contact.
Fearing that he would either end up in jail for being gay or drink himself to death, Harold left for Italy in 1953. His plan was to go for 3 months but he quickly sold his return passage and, for the next 15 years, lived in Tangier, Paris then Athens. This geographical travel mirrored a development of his poetic voice as he took inspiration from the mores of Classical Rome and Greece.
By the time of his expatriation, Harold had published his first collection of poetry, The Undersea Mountain. The establishment of that time coveted poets such as Robert Lowell and Karl Shapiro and viewed Harold’s poems as too wild. William Carlos Williams was an early & strong supporter of his work, stating that Harold used the colloquial American language as never before.
Harold spent the next five years living in Rome, Florence and Naples primarily. In these classical surroundings he could finally breathe freely as a person and a poet. In a society with pre-Christian attitudes to same-sex desire, Harold no longer had to dissociate his soul’s voice from his poetic voice, but instead found fertile ground to blossom in an ancient culture (one which America could not offer). Europe’s shattered remnants from World War destruction had yet to be bulldozed for commercial development, the progress of underarm deodorant & computer automation.
Harold’s next collection of poems, The Dancing Beasts, connected his immersion in Italian life and the historical experience of Ancient Rome to the uncertain and changing realities of the mid- 20th Century. In such poems at “Tiberius’ Villa at Capri” and “An Episode from Procopius”, the poet asks how much had we truly changed from those ancient days? When stone and marble structures from two millennia still stand yet homes, families, and lives were reduced to rubble. What had modern man learned but more efficient and lucrative means to destroy through violence?
Harold’s gift for language and his Whitmanic love of everyday American speech soon found him translating the Latin poet Catullus whose poems had been censored through translations choked by Christian prudishness. In “On Translations of Catullus,” he writes
Catullus, you’d bust your balls laughing! For 2000 years they’ve fixed you like a horny cat- The pedagogues can’t take you straight. Old pederast, they’ll never make it -not while they teach you how to write!
Harold also turned his ear to Giuseppe Gioachino Belli whose satirical sonnets attacked the corruption and egotism of the papacy with a sharp humor. Though D.H. Lawrence and Joyce both attempted translations, the vernacular of 19th Century Rome proved too much of a challenge. Harold said that he accomplished the task with “a dictionary in one hand and an Italian youth in the other.”
During this time Harold continued to correspond with Williams and their surviving letters are preserved in the wonderful collection The American Idiom. In it Williams singled out the poem “Classic Frieze in a Garage” as “the best I have seen of yours” which saw Harold combine the old world and the new by following his native idiom. I will close with the second part of the poem:
I have passed my time dreaming thru ancient ruins walking thru crowded alleys of laundry outside tenements with gourds in windows & crumbling masonry of wars when suddenly I saw among the greasy rags & wheels & axles of a garage the carved nude figures of a classic frieze above dismantled parts of cars! garage swallows sarcophagus! mechanic calmly spraying paint on a fender observed in turn by lapith & centaur! the myth of the Mediterranean was in that garage where the brown wiry youths saw nothing unusual at their work among dead heroes & gods but I saw Hermes in the rainbow of the dark oil on the floor reflected there & the wild hair of the sybil as her words bubbled mad & drowned beneath the motor’s roar
On Friday, March 1st, I will participate in an evening of tributes to writers who have passed away in the last couple years by offering remembrances and reflections on Harold Norse. A number of Harold’s friends and contemporaries will be featured including Ira Cohen, Mel Clay and Peter Orlovsky. Please come and join what will be a lovely event.
Friday, March 1, 2013, 7-9 PM
California College of the Arts Writers Studio
195 DeHaro (@ 15th Street)
San Francisco
In 1993, Harold Norse contributed to the Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series with this 10 page entry of his life and work. Like a condensed version of his much acclaimed Memoirs of a Bastard Angel, this witty and concise overview is a wonderful read. The complete document can be viewed in the Prose section.
After Walt Whitman, one of the greatest influences on both Neeli and Harold was William Carlos Williams whose poetry broke from academic convention to celebrate common American speech. In the early 1950s, Williams singled out Harold amongst the upcoming Beat poets and acted as a mentor, encouraging him to write in the American idiom. Their correspondence was collected and later published under that title. It remains an insightful document worth searching out. In this last clip Neeli reads, from the selected edition, Harold’s poem “William Carlos Williams” which he characterizes as “one of the greatest tributes from one poet to another.”
