June 7th, 2025

Today is Edward Field’s 100th birthday.

Mr. Field is one of only two surviving poets who appeared in Donald Allen’s anthology, The New American Poetry, in 1960 Gary Snyder, who is a half-dozen years younger, is the other survivor.

Edward Field was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Lynbrook in Long Island. At the age of 20, he was a crew member on a bomber plane that crashed on the way back from a mission over Europe. A film was made based on the poem he wrote about the experience of surviving that crash.

He has had a dozen books of poetry published, including Stand Up, Friend, with Me, the title of which inspired the name of a school of poetry largely associated with Los Angeles in general, and Long Beach, California, in particular. Poets such as Gerald Locklin, Charles Harper Webb, Suzanne Lummis, Laurel Ann Bogen, and Jack Grapes all contributed to its emergence as a significant component of West Coast poetry.

Field also has edited several anthologies, including two editions of A GEOGRAPHY OF POETS, which was the first mass-published paperback anthology to give poets in Los Angeles, such as Eloise Klein Healy, any significant recognition.

With gratitude for all you have done for poets, Edward Field, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

As a way of sending you a birthday card in this blog post, I have obtained permission to reprint a poem by Gerald Locklin that is dedicated to him. It appears on page 152 of the recently published book, REQUIEM FOR THE TOAD: Selected Poems, edited by Clint Margrave (New York Quarterly Press).

“where we are” (for edward field)

i envy those
who live in two places:
new work, say, and london
wales and spain;
l.a. and paris
hawaii and wwitzerland
there is always the anticipation
of the change, the chance that what is wrong
is the result of where you are. i have
always loved both the freshness of
arriving and the relief of leaving. with
two homes every move would be homecoming.
I am not even considering the weather, hot
or cold, dry or wet: I am talking about hope.

&&&&&&

“MINOR ACCIDENT OF WAR”

New animated film honors Edward Field, WWII veteran and a hero on several fronts