The Telephone

by Edward Field
My happiness depends on an electric appliance
And I do not mind giving it so much credit
With life in this city being what it is
Each person separated from friends
By a tangle of subways and buses
Yes my telephone is my joy
It tells me that I am in the world and wanted
It rings and I am alerted to love or gossip
I go comb my hair which begins to sparkle
Without it I was like a bear in a cave
Drowsing through a shadowy winter
It rings and spring has come
I stretch and amble out into the sunshine
Hungry again as I pick up the receiver
For the human voice and the good news of friends

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.[1]
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,[2] 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.[3] 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 19631992 (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)