NEW YORK, NY.- Gerard Malanga’s newest book of poetry “The New Melancholia & Other Poems” is set to be released on March 9, 2021. Published by Bottle of Smoke Press, the 148-page book will be available at Bottle of Smoke Press website, Amazon and select bookstores.

Gerard Malanga is a lifelong poet, acclaimed photographer, filmmaker, and was Andy Warhol’s assistant and “closest associate” from 1963-1970.

“With my poetry, I have been channeling the people I’ve been writing about. I talk to them as if they are sitting across from me. The poems are not about the person – it’s talking to the person.”

“The New Melancholia & Other Poems” marks over a dozen poetry books authored by Malanga. His most recent book “Cool & Other Poems” was released in 2019.

Gerard Malanga has always been a keen observer, from his earliest days clutching his first prized Kodak Brownie in the dream-filled Bronx of his boyhood. His sense of wonder is that of a devoted son, seeing the world with fresh eyes, whether focused on the present or the past, on the lines yet to be written or those folded into memory.

His words for friends and family both living or long dead are not just mere examinations of his own mortality, but a questioning look into love and life after life and just where his own poems come from.

The poems themselves are portraits and the portraits are poems and part of Malanga will always be that boy he once knew, offering his heart to those brave enough to take it all in. These poems are human, they exist in the world of make-believe and the dreams that live in us still, no matter how much time passes

“I characterize my work as love poetry. I have to love my subjects in order to write about them, to pay homage to them in some way, to renew their lives, again and again. This is the gift of love.”

Malanga was born in The Bronx in 1943. He is the author of over a dozen books of poetry spanning a nearly 50-year period, including No Respect: New & Selected Poems 1964-2000 (Black Sparrow Press) and Cool & Other Poems (Bottle of Smoke Press, 2019). He is also the subject of a biography, Gerard Malanga by Lars Movin (Bebop, 2011) and (co-authored with Victor Bockris), Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story. His work has appeared in Poetry, Raritan, Yale Review, Harvard Review, Paris Review, Partisan Review, & The New Yorker among others.

Malanga is also a very accomplished portrait and landscape photographer. His subjects included writers and musicians, including iconic images of Mick Jagger, Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs, Andy Warhol, Iggy Pop, and The Velvet Underground.

Malanga was Andy Warhol’s assistant and creative collaborator from 1963 to 1970. Together with Warhol, they created some of the contemporary art’s most celebrated paintings, screen tests and films.