Gerard Malanga will read from his latest full-length book of new poetry, Cool & Other Poems (Bottle of Smoke Press, 2019). Books will be available for purchase at the event and Mr. Malanga will sign books following the reading.

ON COOL & OTHER POEMS: This powerful collection of poems in free verse probes the quotidian details of Malanga’s life as he wrestles to recall it through dreams and memory. Comprised of five sections (Autobiographies, The Cats in My Life, “The Lives They Lived,” Stories, and “The ray of the divine …”), the book presents a tumultuous search for self in one’s mental cache and questions its actuality with bittersweet, raw emotion. By turns wry and achingly sincere, the poems have the feel and sequence of a dream—jagged, taking unexpected turns, at times ambiguous. They becry an existential crisis borne of isolation and loss.

Gerard Malanga was born in the Bronx in 1943. His previous books of poetry are Whisper Sweet Nothings & Other Poems (Bottle of Smoke Press, 2017), and Archives Malanga (Waverly Press, 2011), a 4-volume set of fanzines comprising new poems and non-fiction. An accomplished photographer as well, his first monograph, Resistance to Memory , appeared in 1998 with an introductory essay by Ben Maddow, and a poem by Thurston Moore, followed by Screen Tests Portraits Nudes 1964-1996 (2000), Someone’s Life (2009), Souls (2010), Ghostly Berms (2012) and Photobooths (2013). Long Day's Journey into the Past, Gunnar B. Kvaran Speaks with Gerard Malanga, was published by the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art & Skira in Oslo (2008), and Gerard Malanga, a biography by Lars Movin was published in Copenhagen (2011). He has precently completed his memoirs, In Remembrance of Things Past. Gerard Malanga lives with his cats, Sasha, Zazie, and Xena in upstate New York. His website is gerardmalanga.net