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EDWARD FIELD
When I arrived in Greece in 1949, I instantly felt more at home than anywhere I’d ever been. It was as though I had found my people. Equally important, I was introduced by friends to the poetry of Constantine Cavafy, which changed my own poetry forever. Cavafy’s poetry seemed to me an organic part of the deeply human culture around me with its roots in the classical world. His tone only could have grown out of the Greek life I was experiencing, where people talked to each other, treated each other with an intimacy that embraced each other, and where, astonishing to me as homosexual, men were not afraid of each other, as in the United States where the fear of homosexuality keeps men apart – antagonistic and competitive, suspicious of their tender feelings.
I was rapidly learning to speak Greek, memorizing my phrase book and talking to everyone in the sight. The civil war was still on, and wherever I traveled I was questioned at length by the police, who disbelieved my US passport because I spoke Greek – they thought my accent was that of “a far island”. This gave me a good practice, and soon was able to puzzle out Cavafy’s poems for myself. Cavafy’s language combining Classical Greek with the Modern and Demotic, gave me a clue how to incorporate into my own poetry my Jewish background with its ancient traditions and shtetl informality, the Yiddish inflections of my parents’ English, and the popular speech forms of American everyday life. And far from being ashamed of his sexual feelings, as I had been, Cavafy’s romantic love poems honored thw homosexual impulse aw noble, which was completely at variance with the then homophobic rule in English/American literature. There was also a use of narrative that deeply affected me, one I felt I had been abandoned by modern poetry in the West.
(Από το Kindled Terraces: American Poets in Greece)
When I arrived in Greece in 1949, I instantly felt more at home than anywhere I’d ever been. It was as though I had found my people. Equally important, I was introduced by friends to the poetry of Constantine Cavafy, which changed my own poetry forever. Cavafy’s poetry seemed to me an organic part of the deeply human culture around me with its roots in the classical world. His tone only could have grown out of the Greek life I was experiencing, where people talked to each other, treated each other with an intimacy that embraced each other, and where, astonishing to me as homosexual, men were not afraid of each other, as in the United States where the fear of homosexuality keeps men apart – antagonistic and competitive, suspicious of their tender feelings.
I was rapidly learning to speak Greek, memorizing my phrase book and talking to everyone in the sight. The civil war was still on, and wherever I traveled I was questioned at length by the police, who disbelieved my US passport because I spoke Greek – they thought my accent was that of “a far island”. This gave me a good practice, and soon was able to puzzle out Cavafy’s poems for myself. Cavafy’s language combining Classical Greek with the Modern and Demotic, gave me a clue how to incorporate into my own poetry my Jewish background with its ancient traditions and shtetl informality, the Yiddish inflections of my parents’ English, and the popular speech forms of American everyday life. And far from being ashamed of his sexual feelings, as I had been, Cavafy’s romantic love poems honored thw homosexual impulse aw noble, which was completely at variance with the then homophobic rule in English/American literature. There was also a use of narrative that deeply affected me, one I felt I had been abandoned by modern poetry in the West.
(Από το Kindled Terraces: American Poets in Greece)
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Edward Field (poet)
Edward Field (b. 1924-06-07 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American poet and author.
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.
Other honors include the Shelley Memorial Award, a Prix de Rome, and an Academy Award for the documentary film To Be Alive, for which he wrote the narration. 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, 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. His most recent book After the Fall: Poems Old and New was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2007.
en.wikipedia.org
!!! Στην Ελλάδα του 1949 ένας Αμερικανός ομοφυλόφιλος εκπλήσσεται που οι έλληνες άνδρες εκδηλώνουν μεταξύ τους τα συναισθήματά τους, χωρίς τον "φόβο της ομοφυλοφιλίας" που κρατά μακριά τους αμερικανούς συμπολίτες του;;;
Nα που η έκπληξη έρχεται από το εξωτερικό... Το 1949 πιο πίσω οι αμερικανοί από τους έλληνες;!;!;
Σήμερα όμως;;; Αν όχι σε κοινωνικό, σε πολιτικό επίπεδο τουλάχιστον;
λάθος
* Να που η έκπληξη έρχεται από το εΣωτερικό.
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