Spring and Autumn Annals
A Celebration of the Seasons for Freddie
- Never-before-published memoir written during di Prima's residence in early 60s New York City.
- An illuminating snapshot of a young, female, bohemian artist in Greenwich Village.
- di Prima was a gifted writer deeply entrenched in the Beat-era scene.
- City Lights will simultaneously publish a new expanded edition of di Prima's influential book of poetry, Revolutionary Letters.
- Both Spring and Summer Annals and Revolutionary Letters will be published on the one-year anniversary of di Prima's passing, October 2021.
- Spring and Summer Annals details di Prima's relationships with several well-known artists in New York including the dancer Freddie Herko, who performed in Andy Warhol's early films and was part of The Factory.
- Herko and di Prima were cultural pre-cursors to literary and artistic couples like Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith, setting the stage for their creative kin.
- The book also details di Prima's relationship with the revolutionary poet LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka).
- Spring and Summer offers a fascinating look into the legendary writer's process, which endures as a point of interest to readers and aspiring authors.
- Spring and Summer is a prequel of sorts to Revolutionary Letters, detailing di Prima's life choices, which she then wrote about in her classic revolutionary handbook.
- There is a huge interest in the cultural life of Lower Manhattan during this time period, especially through the eyes of the women who lived it. Examples include: the popularity of Patti's Smith's Just Kids; Ninth Street Women: Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art; and the Netflix series Pretend It's a City with Fran Lebowitz.
- Differs from Memoirs of a Beatnik as this book is based on di Prima's real lived experiences, while that title had many notable embellishments to help its marketability.
Feminist Beat poet Diane di Prima was born in Brooklyn, New York and is the author of more than 40 books. Her poetry collections include This Kind of Bird Flies Backwards (1958), Revolutionary Letters (1971, expanded 2021), the long poem Loba (1978, expanded 1998), and Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems (2001). She is also the author of the short story collection Dinners and Nightmares (1960), the semi-autobiographical Memoirs of a Beatnik (1968), and the memoir Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years (2001). With Amiri Baraka, she co-edited the literary magazine The Floating Bear from 1961 to 1969. She co-founded the Poets Press and the New York Poets Theatre and founded Eidolon Editions and the Poets Institute. Di Prima was named Poet Laureate of San Francisco in 2009. She has been awarded the National Poetry Association’s Lifetime Service Award and the Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement and had also received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Committee on Poetry, the Lapis Foundation, and the Institute for Aesthetic Development. St. Lawrence University granted her an honorary doctorate. Di Prima lived in Northern California and passed away on October 25th, 2020.
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