Spring and Autumn Annals: A Celebration of the Seasons for Freddie

Title: Spring and Autumn Annals: A Celebration of the Seasons for Freddie
Author: Di Prima, Diane
ISBN: 9780872868809
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
Published: 2021
Binding: Quality
Language: English
Condition: New
New from the publisher

Memoir 1286896

Publisher Description:

One of The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2021.

Lyrical and unforgettable, part elegy and part memoir, we present a previously unpublished masterpiece from the Beat Generation icon. Simultaneously released with an expanded edition of di Prima's classic Revolutionary Letters on the one-year anniversary of her passing.

In the autumn of 1964, Diane di Prima was a young poet living in New York when her dearest friend, dancer, choreographer, and Warhol Factory member, Freddie Herko, leapt from the window of a Greenwich Village apartment to a sudden, dramatic, and tragic death at the age of 29. In her shock and grief, di Prima began a daily practice of writing to Freddie. For a year, she would go to her study each day, light a stick of incense, and type furiously until it burned itself out.

The narrative ranges over the decade from 1954--the year di Prima and Herko first met--to 1965, with occasional forays into di Prima's memories of growing up in Brooklyn. Lyrical, elegant, and nakedly honest, Spring and Autumn Annals is a moving tribute to a friendship, and to the extraordinary innovation and accomplishments of the period. Masterfully observed and passionately recorded, it offers a uniquely American portrait of the artist as a young woman in the heyday of bohemian New York City.

Praise for Spring and Autumn Annals:

The book is a treasure. Moving between the East Village, San Francisco, Topanga Canyon and Stinson Beach with young children, di Prima's life is unbelievably rich. She studies Greek, writes, prepares dinners and feasts, and co-edits Floating Bear magazine. Diane di Prima is one of the greatest writers of her generation, and this book offers a window into its lives.--Chris Kraus

Extolled by a writer who radically devoted herself to the experiential truth of beauty and intellect, in poverty and grace, in independent digni