Jimmy Angelina takes us back to the years of American werewolves dancing in the streets for soda pop with his latest campaign in support of Be Italian.
Be Italian is available in softcover, deluxe hardcover, and as a bundle with a signed and numbered art print. Get yours (the book, not the soft drink) from www.BeItalianBook.com
Now available for pre-order from New Texture via SongsheetArt.com: Things That Were Made For Love: The Songsheet Art of Sydney Leff 1924–1932. This big, beautiful book is the first volume to collect artist Sydney Leff's designs for Jazz Age songsheet (sheet music) covers.
Sydney Leff (1901-2005) was one of the leading songsheet artists of the Jazz Age, and outlived all of his contemporaries. Unabashedly sentimental and good humored, his appealing characters (such as his signature "Leff Ladies"), graphic ingenuity, and eye-catching design work both documented and helped define the era.
Edited by Wyatt Doyle, Hal Glatzer, and Norman von Holtzendorff, this 178-page full color collection addresses the first part of Leff's prolific career as a songsheet artist. The editors are currently compiling a second volume that will take up where this book leaves off.
“A monograph about Sydney Leff is long overdue. Part of the explanation for this work being neglected is that sheet music cover art was long viewed as one of the lowest forms of commercial art. Even some commercial artists deemed it to be beneath them. It was not viewed as something of value.
“Now, after Pop Art and other art movements challenged the high/low distinction in art, we are able to look at this artwork without the blinders of that old paradigm. And what do we see? Among other things, a contemporaneous visual expression of the Great American Songbook. We see a visual world that is a riotous collision and cross-pollination of styles, like jazz. We see the heady transitional period between the World Wars, between the ‘weird old America’ and the post-WWII global superpower.
“We also see something by, from, and about New York City, which was the center of the world for popular music production and publication in the 1920s and 1930s. We see and feel the push and pull between the gloomy realities of the Depression years and people’s yearning for escape, fantasy, beauty, joy, and transcendence. And of course we see the rise of Hollywood, as the golden age of the American musical film dawns at the beginning of the 1930s.”
We are proselytizers for Leff and the work of his contemporaries in the field of songsheet illustration. Our goal is to make collections of their work available, affordable, and easily obtained by all interested readers. Toward that end, Things That Were Made For Love is available in two editions, and both are offered at special discounts if ordered from New Texture via SongsheetArt.com, where the deluxe hardcover can also be purchased bundled with an original vintage Leff songsheet (while supplies last).
Both editions include the same content, but the deluxe hardcover offers superior printing and image reproduction. In our opinion, the superior quality of the hardcover makes it the edition to own. Recognizing the deluxe doesn't suit every budget, we are pleased to offer a softcover edition at a lower cover price.
Both editions will available widely, wherever books are sold, later this year. Currently the book can be pre-ordered exclusively (and at a discount) via SongsheetArt.com
Preview over 40 pages of the book on Issuu, here: https://bit.ly/3zhBSkV
A Wyatt Doyle photograph adorns Bill Shute's latest collection, Lockdown Correspondences.
From Kendra Steiner Editions:
Lockdown Correspondences contains three book-length poems: Tomorrow Won't Bring the Rain, Complementary Angles, and Two Self-Portraits (After Murillo), all written and originally published during the COVID lockdown (2020–2021), combined in one hardcover volume.
"These three works were published independently in 2020 and 2021 and have been well-received, though I myself never thought of them as any kind of trilogy or any unified series of works. However, a number of readers (I've gotten at least a dozen e-mails and texts on this subject) have suggested to me that I should consider combining the three pieces into one book, presented as a document of the pandemic/lockdown, and they argued that there is a consistency within the images/content and form/structure which is perhaps clearer to the reader-consumer than it was to the writer-creator. They also suggested that readers looking for literary responses to the pandemic, now that it is more in the rearview mirror with each passing day, would locate these works more easily in the literary marketplace if they were marketed as 'pandemic poems' in a more obvious manner. I'm certainly happy to oblige, and thus Lockdown Correspondences was created (and this combined volume costs less than the three individual volumes, while also being hardcover). It is also an excellent one-volume introduction to the post-2016 phase of my poetry."
The cover photograph is an original work by Wyatt Doyle of New Texture, whose most recent book (with acclaimed visual artist Jimmy Angelina) is Be Italian!
Shute's work is rooted in the post-Projective Verse poetics of Blackburn, Berrigan, and Eigner, but completely his own. A career-spanning Selected Poems (Junk Sculpture From the New Gilded Age) was published by Moloko Print in Germany in late 2021.
His earlier poetry books include Twelve Gates to the City, Satori in Natchez, Riverside Fugue, Point Loma Purple, and Bridge on the Bayou.
He also wrote the introductory essay to the recent collection Ed Wood, Jr.: When the Topic Is Sex (Bear Manor Media), a 540-page collection of the filmmaker/author's early 1970s non-fiction pieces for adult magazines, and has been a contributor to Ugly Things magazine for 35+ years.
Shute lives and works in San Antonio, Texas.
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On the fence about buying the signed, limited edition of Pollen In Print? There are only three days left in the IndieGoGo campiagn, where you can get a deluxe bonus package that includes an exclusive, tipped-in plate signed by the editors, and a VERY limited set of five reference photo proofsheet reproductions from Samson Pollen’s archives.
These are Pollen’s previously unseen illustration reference photos (most featuring Steve Holland) for stories by the likes of Richard Wright and Norman Mailer, they’ve never before been made available to the public, and there are no plans to make them available again.
The graphic accompanying this post shows images from ONE proofsheet. You get FIVE. After the campaign ends, you’ll still be able to buy the book, but not the limited edition reference photoset. When they’re gone, they’re gone. Three days! Get yours while you still can at SamsonPollen.com
Clockwise from top left: Gilbert Gottfried, Frank Santopadre, Jimmy Angelina, Wyatt Doyle
Sending out a BIG thank you to the wonderful loons behind the world's greatest talk show, Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast (Frank Santopadre, Dara and Gilbert Gottfried), who recently hosted Be Italian authors Jimmy Angelina and Wyatt Doyle for a typically freewheeling episode, with an even-greater-than-usual emphasis on Italians, Jews, movies, Italians portraying Jews in movies, and Jews portraying Italians in movies.
Lots of laughs, lots of Gilbert's hilarious impersonations and singing (!), and, of course, lots of Italians — authentic and otherwise.
Be Italian is available in a variety of formats tailored to the needs of Italians and their admirers, including limited edition signed and numbered deluxe hardcover (with exclusive bonus Italian!), softcover, and bundled with signed and numbered art prints of your favorite Italians! All at www.BeItalianBook.com
