On the immediate context of the above shot:
His (Gerard Malanga‘s) film “In Search of the Miraculous“ was the official U.S. entry
at the 10th Gran Premio Bergamo film festival the week before, and he’d been staying in Ettore’s studio around the corner from their flat. Gerard and Allen had lived across the hall from one another a few years earlier on the top floor of an East 5th Street walkup in New York City during the early emergence of Andy Warhol’s factory scene and when the Velvet Underground were just forming, a world in which Malanga was inextricably part.
We’ve featured Gerard before, notably here (with his passport picture of Allen) and here (with his loving remembrance of Peter Orlovsky)
Photographer, filmmaker, Warhol superstar, but we also want to note Gerard’s stature as a poet – Some select titles – Rosebud (1975), No Respect – New & Selected Poems 1964-2000 (2001), and Cool & Other Poems (2018)
Gerard discusses how got introduced to poetry:
View the entire reading – here
and footage of another reading of recent poems – here
Interviews – Here‘s Gerard from 2019
more recently:
Alex Jovanovich for Artfortum (2024)
Ron Rivlin for Revolver (2024)
Steve Luttrel for Cafe Review (2023)
Michael Limnios for Blues and Gr.(2013)
Erik La Trade for Rain Taxi (2013)
Charles Guiliano for Berkshire Fine Arts (2010) – see also here and here
Glenn O’Brien for Interview (2009)
Interview for Factory People (2008)…
Richard Marshall – 3am Magazine Interview (2002) – The Secret Language of Poetry)
& don’t miss this – Gerard – Gerard as archivist – Gerard’s audio CD from 2000
&, courtesy of his web-site – A remarkable display of flyers and posters
Gerard and the Beats – from his interview with Charles Guiliano (2010):
CG: In past conversations you discussed visiting with Charles Olson in Gloucester. And also mentioned being close to Robert Creeley. Could you discuss those relationships as well as other poets you were close to? You took some iconic images of William Burroughs which I published in Nightfall magazine ages ago. In fact I bought one of the images. Of him standing in front of the Burroughs company logo. How well did you know him and Ginsberg? How about the other Beats like Gregory Corso who lived at the Chelsea?
GM: Bob (Creeley) and I span nearly forty years together and I’ve recounted all this in a long piece published in the Academy of American Poets newsletter back in ‘(20)05. Allen was also a dear friend known since early ‘(19)64 who always seemed to wanna look after me. We even shared two apartments on the top floor of this six-storey walk-up on East 5th Street way over by Avenue D, so we go back a long way over many adventures.
He commissioned me to photograph Jack Kerouac’s “scroll manuscript”, as he liked to call it, of On the Road back in ’82. I was the first photographer ever to set eyes on that manuscript. Bill (Burroughs) I’d met at a party at Panna Grady’s apartment over at the Dakota. This would’ve been in ’67. She was a patron of some of the Beat poets, so there was a lot of money flying around. Bill somehow knew I was in correspondence with Donatella Manganotti, his first Italian translator, and urged me to look her up once I got over to Italy. Then I didn’t see Bill again until that trip Jim, Irene and I made to London back in ’72.
It was bitter cold as I recall. February. I photographed him with Brion Gysin at their fancy flat over in St. James’s. So we became instant friends. Bill adored my cat Eban whenever he’d visit the flat Diane Hersey and I had over on East 14th. You remember it.
Gregory and I never got along. He was always trying to compete with me because of this Italian-American connection he had going. There’s nothing I dislike more than a cornball. He always made a big deal about being an ex-con when really he was just a juvenile delinquent from reform school. But Bob, Allen, Bill were all lifelong friends from the start.”
Gerard Malanga celebrates his 82nd birthday today. Happy Birthday Gerard!