"The book is a treasure. &; Diane di Prima is one of the greatest writers of her generation, and this book offers a window into its lives."&;Chris Kraus
"Diane Di Prima's Spring and Autumn Annals arrives as a long-lost charm of illuminated meditations to love, life, death, eros and selflessness. An essential 1960s text of visionary rapaciousness.&;&;Thurston Moore
"[Freddie Herko] wished for a third love before he died; and what a love is in this book's beholding, saying, and release. Di Prima's dancing narrative, propelled and circling at the speed of thought, picking up every name and detailed perception as a rolling tide, fills me with gratitude for the truth of her eye. Nothing gets past it, not even the 'ballet slippers letting in the snow.'"&;Ana Boicevic
"A masterpiece of literary reflection, as quest to archive her dancer friend's life, to make art at all costs and the price dearly paid. &; di Prima&;s poetic memoir of the artist journey is a triumph. A must read and reread for years to come."&;Karen Finley
"A Beat poet's journal following the suicide of her closest friend encompasses many seasons and cycles of life and death. &; With evocative detail and introspective insight, she writes of that loss and the feeling of being turned loose, occasionally unmoored, struggling to create art through years of living in barely habitable apartments. &; A useful document for scholars of the Beat generation."&;Kirkus Reviews
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.
Later, di Prima would take up this stream-of-consciousness manuscript and make it into something for others to read. The result is an eloquent ode to her friend; to the constellation of writers, artists, and revolutionaries who made up their community; and to the chaos and struggle of lives lived fully in the pursuit of personal and artistic goals while the world around them hurtles toward changes that will soon upend everything.
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.
Industry Reviews
"Written in the wake of her friend's suicide, Spring and Autumn Annals is a kind of epistolary diary: a chronicle driven by confusion, deliberation and grief. Like Christa Wolf's One Day a Year, Annals conveys the texture of time and the appearance of everyday objects in a disappeared world. 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 dignity, and in the community of Beat consciousness, Diane Di Prima's Spring and Autumn Annals arrives as a long-lost charm of illuminated meditations to love, life, death, eros and selflessness. An essential 1960s text of visionary rapaciousness."-Thurston Moore
"Diane di Prima's text calls up the eponymous Chinese Spring and Autumn Annals-an official chronicle of the state of Lu over 241 years. Scholars debate whether these were written for learned men or ancestral spirits to read; di Prima writes to her departed Freddie, and by him captures the living spirit of his time. Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer pass as the poet talks her friend through bardo and the year beyond. And in the chapter-body of each season, the mis-en-abyme of its predecessors flows back to the old clear mirror where childhood holiday rituals point like weatherwanes toward di Prima's life in art. As Freddie reversed the order of sleep and waking by spinning into reality the bad dream of his death, di Prima counts backwards from his death in a hide-and-seek calendar revealing Freddie behind every red satin curtain. He wished for a third love before he died; and what a love is in this book's beholding, saying, and release. Di Prima dancing narrative, propelled and circling at the speed of thought, picking up every name and detailed perception as a rolling tide, fills me with gratitude for the truth of her eye. Nothing gets past it, not even the 'ballet slippers letting in the snow.'"-Ana Bozicevic
"A masterpiece of literary reflection, as quest to archive her dancer friend's life, to make art at all costs and the price dearly paid. Di Prima's observational capacity is profound, her devotion and loyalty assures her deserved place as a national treasure. She generously instills in us the call of poetic remembrance as an act of resistance, and gives voice to the marginalized participants in experimental cultural movements that carried courage in creative rebellion while envisioning freedom of the human spirit. Di Prima's poetic memoir of the artist journey is a triumph. A must read and reread for years to come."-Karen Finley
"A Beat poet's journal following the suicide of her closest friend encompasses many seasons and cycles of life and death. ... With evocative detail and introspective insight, she writes of that loss and the feeling of being turned loose, occasionally unmoored, struggling to create art through years of living in barely habitable apartments. ... A useful document for scholars of the Beat generation."-Kirkus Reviews
"From the moment she dropped out of Swarthmore and moved to New York, di Prima had a knack for living her way into the red hot margin of things. In the 1950s she spent time with the Beats, which later turned into the subject of her book, Memoirs of a Beatnik. In the 1960s she was active in New York theatre and also edited The Floating Bear with Amiri Baraka, before moving to Stinson Beach and becoming a full-time spoke of the wheel of Bay Area poetic light. Autumn Annals sees all of this period through the wavy lens of grief. The book is a series of diaries di Prima wrote in tribute and mourning for her friend and Warhol Factory Member, Freddie Herko, who jumped to his death at age 29 in 1964. di Prima is writing to console herself, and her anguish and shock bleed over into how she sees the world. The urgency with which she must make decisions."-John Freeman, Lit Hub's "Most Anticipated Books of 2019"
"Now, nearly three-quarters of a century since the Beat heyday, di Prima's new book, Spring and Autumn Annals to be released by City Lights Publishers, promises to shine a light on the lifestyle of young women artists in 1950s New York City, with di Prima taking her rightful place as a leading voice of the Beat Generation."-Observer
