Edward Field (poet)

Edward Field (born June 7, 1924) is an American poet and author.

Biography

Field was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Lynbrook, Long Island, New York, where he played cello in the Field Family Trio, which had a weekly radio program on WGBB Freeport. He served in World War II in the 8th Air Force as a navigator in heavy bombers, and flew 25 missions over Germany.

He began writing poetry during World War II, after a Red Cross worker handed him an anthology of poetry. In 1963 his book Stand Up, Friend, With Me was awarded the prestigious Lamont Poetry Prize and was published. In 1992, he received a Lambda Award for Counting Myself Lucky, Selected Poems 1963-1992.

Other honors include the Shelley Memorial Award, a Rome Prize, and an Academy Award for the documentary film To Be Alive, for which he wrote the narration. He received the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle in 2005.

In 1979, he edited the anthology A Geography of Poets, and in 1992, with Gerald Locklin and Charles Stetler, brought out a sequel, A New Geography of Poets.

He and his partner Neil Derrick, long-time residents of Greenwich Village, have written a best-selling historical novel about the Village, The Villagers. In 2005 the University of Wisconsin Press published his literary memoirs The Man Who Would Marry Susan Sontag and Other Intimate Literary Portraits of the Bohemian Era, the title of which refers to the writer Alfred Chester. His most recent book After the Fall: Poems Old and New was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2007.

British editor Diana Athill's Instead of a Book: Letters to a Friend (Granta Books, 2011) is a collection of letters from her to Field chronicling their intimate correspondence spanning more than 30 years.

Books

Poetry

• Icarus (1963)
• Stand Up, Friend, With Me (Grove Press, 1963)
• Variety Photoplays (Grove Press, 1967)
• Eskimo Songs and Stories (Delacorte Press, 1973)
• A Full Heart (Sheep Meadow Press, 1977)
• Stars In My Eyes (Sheep Meadow Press, 1978)
• The Lost, Dancing (Watershed Tapes, 1984)
• New And Selected Poems (Sheep Meadow Press, 1987)
• Counting Myself Lucky, Selected Poems 1963–1992 (Black Sparrow, 1992)
• A Frieze for a Temple of Love (Black Sparrow Books, 1998)
• Magic Words (Harcourt Brace, 1998)
• After The Fall: Poems Old and New (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007)

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Fiction (with Neil Derrick)

• The Potency Clinic (Bleecker Street Press, 1978)
• Die PotenzKlinik (Berlin: Albino Verlag, 1982)
• Village (Avon Books, 1982)
• The Office (Ballantine Books, 1987)
• The Villagers (Painted Leaf Press, 2000)

Non-fiction

• The Man Who Would Marry Susan Sontag, and Other Intimate Literary Portraits of the Bohemian Era (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006, paperback edition, 2007)
• Kabuli Days: Travels in Old Afghanistan (World Parade Books, 2008)

Anthologies and editorial

• A Geography of Poets (Bantam Books, 1979)
• (with C. Stetler/G. Locklin) A New Geography of Poets (University of Arkansas Press, 1992)
• Editor, Head Of A Sad Angel, Stories by Alfred Chester (Black Sparrow, 1990). Introduction by Gore Vidal.
• Editor, Looking For Genet, Essays by Alfred Chester (Black Sparrow Press, 1992)
• Editor, Dancing With A Tiger, Selected Poems by Robert Friend (Spuyten Duyvil, 2003)

Periodicals

Poetry and essays in The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Gay & Lesbian Review, Partisan Review, The Nation, Evergreen Review, New York Times Book Review, Michigan Quarterly, Raritan Quarterly Review, Parnassus, and Kenyon Review.

Miscellaneous

• Wrote narration for documentary film To Be Alive, which won Academy Award, 1965
• Readings at the Library of Congress, Poetry Center, YMHA, and hundreds of colleges and universities
• Taught poetry workshops at the Poetry Center, YMHA, Sarah Lawrence, Hofstra U.
• Editor of The Alfred Chester Society Newsletter

Awards and honors

• Lamont Poetry Prize (Academy of American Poets), 1962
• Guggenheim Fellowship, 1963
• Shelley Memorial Award (Poetry Society of America), 1974
• Prix de Rome (American Academy of Arts & Letters), 1981
• Lambda Literary Award, 1993
• Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award (Publishing Triangle), 2005
• W. H. Auden Award (Sheep Meadow Foundation), 2005

External links

• Field's website
• Benjamin Ivry, "British Literary Doyenne's Letters to Gay Poet", The Forward, March 9, 2012.