Hidden History

Harold Norse’s relationship with Charles Bukowski started when the poet/painter Kay Johnson received a message for Norse mailed within a letter to her at the Beat Hotel in Paris from Bukowski in late April 1963. From then until August 1972 Norse and Bukowski kept in touch regularly. Both Norse and Bukowski were physically ill when their correspondence began; throughout their exchange a dark cloud hangs over both men as they question their chances at literary immortality. But for Bukowski their communication was a bolster that helped him believe in his genius because someone of Norse’s stature had bet on him. They finally met in January 1969. At the beginning of their relationship, Bukowski may have been influenced by Norse’s poetics more than we have previously suspected, yet the relationship between Norse and Bukowski tragically fell apart. It was a fractured relationship that went from mutual admiration to a fierce rivalry. Both writers shared connections to the Beats and the little magazine publishing scene. Along with Philip Lamantia, they appeared together in Penguin Modern Poets 13 (1969). Bukowski lauded Norse’s poetics, but he was also cruelly homophobic. Their relationship sheds light on the struggles of two literary outsiders.