Harold Norse,
I Am Going to Fly Through Glass: Selected Poems
illustrated with photographs of the poet
edited by Todd Swindell
"Reading this book, one experiences an expansion of the brain, a stupefaction of the spirit, and a kind of mesmerism in which the uniqueness of poetical experience is revealed." --Rain Taxi
"The present selection, illustrated with photographs of the poet, goes a long way towards putting Norse back on the poetical map, especially for readers in the U.K. A helpful preface by Todd Swindell and an informative introduction by Neeli Cherkowski helps to place Norse and his colorful life in context by establishing the background to his work and its relationship to the rest of the beat movement in America. For too long, Norse has been the outsider, certainly in the U.K., but, with this publication, the “lone wolf”, as he once described himself, has finally come in from the cold." --Neil Leadbeater, Galatea Resurrects
“The fiery force is nothing more than the life force as we know it. It is the flame of desire and love, of sex and beauty, of pleasure and joy as we consume and are consumed, as we burn with pleasure and burn out in time.” ― Harold Norse
Masterfully edited by Todd Swindell, I Am Going to Fly Through Glass offers a brilliant introduction to, the work of one of the twentieth-century’s foremost poets, designated by William Carlos Williams as “the best poet of [his] generation.”
“Harold Norse tumbles out of time and lands on the page once again, a dancing beast, bastard angel, and carnivorous saint, all self-descriptions. He was a poet of extraordinary energy, a master of mindfulness and imaginative power. For those of us fortunate to spend time with Harold, the light sparkled. In conversation we could be on the cobblestones of Paris, the grid of streets that is Manhattan Island, the twisting paths of the island of Hydra in Greece’s Saronic Gulf on the Aegean Sea, or in San Francisco’s Café Trieste, where the poet held court in the early 1970s, halcyon days when City Lights Press published his now classic Hotel Nirvana in the Pocket Poets Series edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Harold would be bundled in wraps, no matter the weather, always with a cappuccino or espresso before him. In those days, he’d rattle off Italian to Yolanda, the sister of the café’s owner, Gianni Giotto. It was obvious that Harold had the hand gestures down as well as the language, and many a visitor from Rome or Milan found a willing ear in the dancing beast, who was sure to tell them he had translated the wild and raucous sonnets of G. G. Belli, the 19th century poet. The café was captured in the now classic ‘At The Trieste,’ a poem that begins with Norse’s description of reading Virgil’s Eclogues, and ends in a corner café.” —from the Introduction by Neeli Cherkovski
ISBN 13: 978-1-58498-110-7, paper, $21.95