I lost my fanbase to AIDS." In the same interview, Poole said that he had been a heavy cocaine user, and that "cocaine saved my life," because it made him unable to have sex. Poole said that he stopped making films because of "the AIDS situation. One of them, Moving! (1974) challenged what Poole in a 1978 interview called the "middle-class values" of "the vast majority of gays" with its lengthy and graphic fisting scenes, which Poole considered important as "one interpretation of reality related man-to-man." A number of Poole's films starred Casey Donovan, one of the best known porn stars of his time. The film was unsuccessful with audiences, though well received by the few critics who saw it. Poole and Shulman then attempted to make a crossover film, Wakefield Poole's Bible, a trio of Old Testament stories focusing on female Biblical figures and starring Georgina Spelvin as a comic Bathsheba. He and Boys in the Sand producer Marvin Shulman made another film the following year entitled Bijou, starring Bill Harrison. Poole made his directorial film debut with Boys in the Sand (1971). In the late 1960s, Poole and his lover Peter Schneckenburger (later known as Peter Fisk, star of Boys in the Sand) began experimenting with film and multimedia shows, culminating in a multimedia gallery show for Broadway poster artist David Edward Byrd at the Triton Gallery in New York. From 1964 to 1968, Poole was married to Nancy Van Rijn, a Broadway performer and choreographer. He joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1957 and later became a dancer, choreographer, and director on television and Broadway.
Poole was born in Salisbury, North Carolina, and was raised both there and in Jacksonville, Florida, where his family later moved.