(He also appeared, lightly fictionalized, as the character of Leslie in her 1969 Memoirs of a Beatnik.) A new book by di Prima, who died last year at the age of 86, offers another view of Herko and the downtown bohemian scene of early 1960s New York of which they were a part. Di Prima’s friendship with him and his death at age 28 were defining experiences of her life, and he has been the focus of several of her books, including Freddie Poems (1974) and Recollections. Soon after, Freddie Herko would die by leaping-in a perfect jeté, according to the sole witness-from a fifth-story Greenwich Village window. “It was a rite of mourning,” di Prima wrote in her 2001 memoir, Recollections of My Life as a Woman.
In silence except for his labored breathing and the sound of his shoes scraping the floor, Freddie Herko held a candle up to a mirror and walked en pointe down one aisle, across the front of the theater, up the other aisle, then out of the building, vanishing into the night. Spring and Autumn Annals: A Celebration of the Seasons for Freddie
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