Harold Norse, the Love Poems, 1940-1985

by Harold Norse

Praise for Harold Norse's WILLIAM CARLOS "I believe in your intellectual honesty and in what you are doing with the American idiom of which you are an intrinsic genius." CHARLES "He can't write a bad line. I've never seen one. . . . He is one of the great ones of our rather strange times." JAMES If light ever enters the hearts of men, Harold Norse will be one of the writers who will have helped to set it there." ALLEN "I was kept amazed by your sense of reality, by your awareness of the thing in these poems."

Genres: Poetry

183 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Harold Norse was an American writer, openly gay, 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.

Reviews

[Grace Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read at the PF library and it’s curing my heart ache

[Darrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-reading this book. The first time I read it, I like the style of the poetry. How it has a sharp wit and sharper lines. Hoping to re-read this and pick up something different.

After re-reading this book, I put post its on the poems I liked...poems I want to go back to...I think I put post its on half the poems in this book. These poems have a mix of surface poems...about loving men...and the really deep...societies point of view on homosexuality -- feeling trapped and stuff like that. I guess the technique I learned from this book is bluntness. I think for me, as a poet, I focus too much on blurring the lines (not literally)...rather blurring meanings...in Norse's work the blunt lines like "We all live under a dictatorship/by God or man" brings an interesting flavor to the poem.

This is my first book that I read of Harold Norse...I only have his collected works...I would've liked to read his individual poetry books...maybe I will in the future.

[t · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Three thousand years ago / the men who painted frescoes / to commemorate the dead / knew that lust was all that stood / between themselves and them.”

This book was recommended to me by someone I love very much.