From Bastard to Angel

After fifteen years abroad in Europe and North Africa, Harold Norse made San Francisco his home in 1971. The city continued to host a vibrant poetry scene centered in the North Beach neighborhood of City Lights Books and the Caffé Trieste. The decade and a half since Norse’s exile had seen the end of literary censorship and rise of the counter culture in the United States. Norse found himself in a significant capacity to establish himself as one of the groundbreaking poetic voices that existed outside the confines of academia as well as heteronormative society. Taking cues from the underground press as well as avant-garde poetry journals, Norse published his own literary magazine, Bastard Angel, in three volumes between 1972 and 1974. It was a unique and vibrant mixture of established authors such as Jean Genet, Anaïs Nin, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Diane Di Prima. The story of Bastard Angel magazine provides an illuminating entry into Norse’s unique position at a pivotal shift in American arts and culture towards the close of the 20th century documenting his role as a bridge between the groundbreaking writers that came before along with the new generation of visionary voices.