Edward Field’s death in New York City yesterday, September 6, leaves Gary Snyder as the last surviving poet who appeared in Donald Allen’s anthology, The New American Poetry (Grove Press, 1960; reissued by the University of California Press in its original format, 1995). I mention this anthology because it is rather astonishing that neither the New York Times obituary nor the Wikipedia entry for Edward Field mention it at all. In point of fact, the biographical statement that Field provided Allen includes crucial details that illuminate Field’s development as a poet. Here is the final fourth of Field’s self-portrait in his mid-thirties:

“”When I came back from Europe Worked at different jobs, warehouse, art reproduction, machinist, and finally clerk-typisI started acting five years ago in an amateur group and then went on to study with the great vera Soloviova of the Moscow Art Theatr The last few summers I have been leading man in summer theaters. I am trying to make the New York theatre scene.”

Field’s experiences in theater provide crucial background information for the development of his poetics and go a long way to explaining his success as a poet in giving public readings that enabled him to make a living as a poet. His theatrical training also illuminates his attraction to poetry scenes such as the ones that emerged on the West Coast between 1955 and 1995. Field distinguished himself as a contributor to Allen’s anthology by going on to edit an influential anthology, A GEOGRAPHY OF POETS, which appeared in two iterations. The first was a paperback from Bantam that included a generous selection of poets based in Los Angeles Country. The scene in Long Beach, California came in fro particular notice, a rather startling development given that Long Beach was considered a sideshow to the sideshow of Los Angeles poetry in the 1970s. Among the poets who caught Field’s attention were Gerald Locklin, who was a frequent correspondent with Charles Bukowski. Other Los Angeles poets included future L.A. poet laureate Eloise Klein Healy and Pasadena poet laureate Ron Koerge.

Field’s influence on Los Angeles poetry is probably about as pervasive as Frank O’Hara’s on the scenes around the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s in New York. While “Stand Up” poetry never became cohesive enough ao be regarded as a “school,” it allowed many poets in Southern California to have at least a temporary place to bed down as they tested other possibilities. Enough poets singed the desk register, so to speak, that poet-editors such as Charles Harper Webb and Suzanne Lummis specifically organized anthologies to give this variant on post-Beat poetry more prominence. Perhaps the best indicators of its ability to make some sort of inroads is the version published by the University of Iowa Press in 2002. In turn, that’s book’s impact on Barbara Hamby’s Serious Funny is too obvious to need much commentary.

Finally, I do want to compliment the NYT obituary, however, in its on-line version, for providing a link to a film, “Minor Accident of War,” which is based on a poem Field wrote about his experiences as a young man engaged in combat duty during World War II.

Today is Labor Day, and veterans’ labor deserves all the honor that can be bestowed on it.