PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
Poetry
Stand Up, Friend, With Me (Grove Press, l963)
Variety Photoplays (Grove Press, l967)
Eskimo Songs and Stories (Delacorte, l973)
A Full Heart (Sheep Meadow Press, l977)
Stars In My Eyes (Sheep Meadow Press, l978)
New And Selected Poems (Sheep Meadow Press, l987)
Counting Myself Lucky, Selected Poems l963l992 (Black Sparrow, l992)
A Frieze for a Temple of Love (Black Sparrow, 1998)
Magic Words (Harcourt Brace, 1998)
After The Fall, Poems Old & New (U. of Pittsburgh Press, 2007)
Broadsides and Chapbooks
“Curse of the Catwoman” (2003), a poem broadside, 28x22cm,
published by The Acre, 9 Robandy Road, Andover, MA 01810
“The Journey” (2007), chapbook illustrated by Jan Jutte,
published by Jack’s Brook www.jacksbrook.com
CDs and TAPES
Standing Up Together (poems by Edward Field, music by Ack Van Rooyen, 2009)
available from WorldParadeBooks.com
The Lost, Dancing (Watershed Tapes, l984)
Ack Van Rooyen Invites Edward Field, poems and music (video in production)
Fiction (with Neil Derrick)
The Potency Clinic (Bleecker Street Press, l978), and as Die PotenzKlinik tr. Gerhard
Hoffmann (Albino Verlag, Berlin, l982)
Village by Bruce Elliot (Avon Books, l982), and as The Villagers by Edward Field and
Neil Derrick, 2nd rev. edition (Painted Leaf Press, 2000), and The Villagers by
Bruce Elliot, 3rd rev. edition (Bleecker Street Press, 2009)
The Office (Ballantine Books, l987)
Non-Fiction
The Man Who Would Marry Susan Sontag, and Other Intimate Literary Portraits of the
Bohemian Era (U. of Wisconsin Press 2006, paperback edition 2007)
Kabuli Days, Travels In Old Afghanistan (World Parade Books and
worldparadebooks.com, 2008)
Anthologies and Editorial
A Geography of Poets (Bantam Books, l979)
A New Geography of Poets (with C. Stetler/G. Locklin) (U. of Arkansas Press, l992)
Ed., Head Of A Sad Angel, stories by Alfred Chester (Black Sparrow, l990). Intro by Gore
Vidal
Ed., Looking For Genet, essays by Alfred Chester (Black Sparrow Press, l992)
Ed., Dancing With A Tiger, Selected Poems by Robert Friend (Spuyten Duyvil 2003)
Poetry Videos
www.youtube.com -- under fieldinski or Edward Field
PERIODICALS
Poetry and essays in The New Yorker, NY Review of Books, Gay & Lesbian Review, Partisan
Review, Nation, Evergreen Review, NY Times Book Review, Michigan Quarterly, Raritan, Parnassus,
Kenyon Review, etc.
MISCELLANEOUS
Wrote narration for documentary film, "To Be Alive" (produced and directed by Francis
Thompson) -- Academy Award, l965
Readings at the Library of Congress, Poetry CenterYMHA, and hundreds of universities
Poetry workshops at Poetry CenterYMHA, Sarah Lawrence, Hofstra U.
Poet-in-Residence, Eckerd College
Editor of The Alfred Chester Society Newsletter
AWARDS AND HONORS
Lamont Award (Academy of American Poets), l962)
Guggenheim Fellowship, l963
Shelley Memorial Award (Poetry Society of America, l974)
Prix de Rome (American Academy of Arts & Letters, l98l)
Lambda Literary Award, l993
Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award (Publishing Triangle, 2005)
W.H. Auden Award (Sheep Meadow Foundation, 2005)
WHAT THE CRITICS HAVE SAID ABOUT EDWARD FIELD’S POETRY
William Carlos Williams: “You gotta, to write ‘em, have the words and you’ve got ‘em. Thanks to God
you’re not precious. I am much impressed.”\
Poet Laureate Billy Collins: “Edward Field is still producing spry, animated poems, which perfectly mix
honesty and playfulness. Let us stand up, friends, and give his new collection a round of loud applause.”
Prof. Gerald Locklin: “I have for decades considered Edward Field our greatest living poet. He
combines the wriest wit with the deepest compassion. He has raised the movie poem, the 'confessional'
poem, the performance poem, and the memoir to the highest art in the most conversational of styles. He
taught an entire generation of poets to talk straight and (his favorite word) 'sassy.' He remains modest,
mischievous, and full of surprises. He is quite simply (or not so simply) the best.”
Richard Howard: “No one else but Edward Field can strike this note, can sound this depth, and though he
will venture where no one else readily accompanies him, the rewards of such quixotic errantry are
omnipresent: the courage of the heart, the warmth of the tongue, the truth of the life.”
The Nation: “He’s a natural.”
Lincoln Kirstein: “…so alive, so charming, so accurate, and such fun.”
Georges Simenon: “J’y ai retrouvé toute l’Amérique que j’aime.”
Frank Polite: “When I first read Edward Field’s poetry I threw the book out. Field threatened my poetics
and my person as only a very fine poet can. Since then I’ve owned, loaned, lost, sent off as gifts to friends
over 30 copies, and required the book in several courses.”
James Dickey: “He possesses a tantalizing off-center view of the world.”
Robert Mazzocco, in The New York Review of Books: ” It is impossible not to like Edward Field.”
Ellen Krout-Hasegawa, in the LA Weekly: “He has become known as the father of Standup Poetry, a
movement peculiar to Southern California.”
William J. Harris, in American Book Review: “To celebrate Field’s song is an act of love for an original and
important poet. Edward Field’s poetry has always been a good antidote against the abyss, against those
gloomy days when even the mundane earth opens up before my eyes, revealing the fires of hell.”
David Bergman: “His poems of plain speaking are often both hilarious and moving.”
Andrei Codrescu: “Edward Field is, quietly, one of our best poets. Every one of his books has been an
occasion for delight.”
Gerald Locklin: “I consider him the great living American poet.” “He has helped to shape of poetry of
accessibility, a personal poetry of the speaking voice, freed of pseudo-poetic pretence. There have
not been many books – “Leaves of Grass is one that comes to mind – in which a man and his words have
been so at one.”
Dennis Selby, in the Nation: “Anyone unfamiliar with Edward Field’s poems should immediately rectify this
appalling ignorance.”
Ron Koertge: “Edward Field is my favorite poet and he has been for decades. Deftly written
and deceptively casual, Field's poetry lodges in the heart where it belongs. This new collection, After the
Fall, is just plain wonderful.”
Kirkus Reviews on Magic Words: “Primal, earthy images in exceptional poetry. . .The verses about the
creation of day, night, sun, moon, stars, thunder, lightning, heaven, earth and hell resound with wonder,
vengeance, and bravery, offering a keen sense of the people.”
Ray Olson, Booklist, October 1, 2007: ”When [Field] writes about the (his) body, he is as wondrous as
Ginsberg but commonplace and funny rather than cosmic and vatic. When he’s vulgar (reasonably often), he’
s like a benign, though filthy, stand-up comic, minus the cynicism. . . . But if humor predominates in his older
work, anger suffuses the new poems, written after the fall of the Twin Towers. Because that anger is
mastered and channeled into cogent, down-to-earth speech, Field’s may be the best 9/11 protest poems
yet.”
for The Man Who Would Marry Susan Sontag
Just finished your wonderful book! Rich, gossipy, edifying! You have a prize, indeed! -- henry van dyke
“Beautifully written…a great achievement.” -- Jaime Manrique, author Eminent Maricones
for The Villagers
I've just discovered a marvelous new novel (hot off the press, it's that new), that I consider Literature with a
capital L. It's Edward Field and Neil Derrick's "The Villagers", a novel of Greenwich Village and
its denizens, from 1845 to 1975. I haven't come across a contemporary novel at this level of excellence for
years. -- Leslie Schenk
“I finished reading Mr. Field's and Mr. Derrick's book [The Villagers] and I can't tell you how much I loved
it!…I loved how I was transported back to 130 years in the life of the Endicott family and the history of
Greenwich Village. I laughed, I cried, I grieved the ending of the book. When can we get Mr. Field in the
store for a discussion and signing? I'm going to put this wonderful historical saga on my staff
pick. Everyone must read it.” -- Leticia Acosta, Community Relations Mgr, Barnes & Noble, Clifton, NJ
Diana Athill, founding editor of Andre Deutsch Publishers, says: “I found myself ending it with genuine
regret.”
On the web site, Amazon.com, it gets five stars from reader/critic Olivia Alfano who writes: “I'm into The
Villagers and it is wonderful. The amount of historical research is staggering--it could be used in history
classes as a text. And the pace is absolutely galloping. I'm whizzing along and can't stand to put it
down until my eyes burn with fatigue.
“…a meaty, lengthy saga that’s bound to find a wide readership.” -- Publisher’s Weekly