His life was about being overlooked. Harold, who died June 8 at 92, was a brilliant poet in an era in which you were supposed to veil your marital problems or homosexual angst in 10 layers of metaphor. But in poem after poem, Harold used his tremendous pain--he was an illegitimate child who stood 5 ft. 2 in. and was openly gay--and, in a language that was accessible to anybody in America, made you feel very powerful things.
Harold's poems were chiseled. William Carlos Williams, who was pretty much a god of American poetry, called him the "best poet of [his]...
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