Edward Field

On June 7, 1924, Edward Field was born in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up on Long Island,
where he played cello in the Field Family Trio over radio station WGBB. During World War II, he
flew twenty-five missions over Europe. After a short time at New York University, where he first
met Alfred Chester. He travelled to Europe in 1946 and focused seriously on his writing; he
returned to the United States in 1948.

In 1956, after brief stints working in a warehouse, in art production, as a machinist, and as a
clerk-typist, Field began studying acting with Russian migr Vera Soloviova of the Moscow Art
Theatre. He applied the techniques he learned to reading poetry in public, and was able to
support himself in this way throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

Field has taught workshops at the Poetry Center of the YMHA, Sarah Lawrence, and other
colleges. His books of poetry include After The Fall: Poems Old and New (University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2007); Magic Words: Poems (Harcourt, 1997); Counting Myself Lucky: Selected
Poems 1963-1992 (1992); New and Selected Poems from the Book of My Life (1987); A Full
Heart (1977), nominated for the Lenore Marshall Prize; and Stand Up, Friend, with Me (1963),
which was the 1962 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets.

Field has edited anthologies of poetry, translated Eskimo songs and stories, and written the
narration for the documentary film To Be Alive, which won an Academy Award for best
documentary short subject in 1965. He is the editor of The Alfred Chester Newsletter and has
prepared several volumes of Chesters work for Black Sparrow Press. Field has also collaborated
on several popular novels with Neil Derrick, under the joint pseudonym of Bruce Elliot.
Although Field makes regular trips to Europe, his permanent residence is in New York City.

A Selected Bibliography
Poetry
Stand Up, Friend, With Me (Grove Press, 1963)
Variety Photoplays (Grove Press, 1967)
Eskimo Songs and Stories (Delacorte, 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 l963-l992 (Black Sparrow, 1992)
A Frieze for a Temple of Love (Black Sparrow, 1998)
Magic Words (Harcourt Brace, 1998)
After The Fall: Poems Old and New (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007)

Fiction (with Neil Derrick)

The Potency Clinic (Bleecker Street Press, 1978)
Die PotenzKlinik (Albino Verlag, Berlin, 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 Profies of the Bohemian
Era (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005)