Lenore Kandel’s Followers (16)

Lenore Kandel

Born

New York, New York, The United States

Genre

Poetry

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Lenore Kandel (born 1932) is an American poet who was briefly notorious as the author of a short book of poetry, The Love Book. A small pamphlet compiled of 4 poems, The Love Book provoked censorship with its poem "To Fuck with Love". As a result the book was seized by the police as hard core pornography in violation of state obscenity codes, from both City Lights Books and The Psychedelic Shop in 1966. Consequently Kandel gained cause célèbre in San Francisco during the hippie movement in Haight-Ashbury.

A student of Zen before she moved from her native New York City to San Francisco in the early 1960s; once in San Francisco she met the Beat poets Lew Welch and Gary Snyder and had a brief affair with Jack Kerouac, who immortalized Kandel as Lenore Kandel (born 1932) is an American poet who was briefly notorious as the author of a short book of poetry, The Love Book. A small pamphlet compiled of 4 poems, The Love Book provoked censorship with its poem "To Fuck with Love". As a result the book was seized by the police as hard core pornography in violation of state obscenity codes, from both City Lights Books and The Psychedelic Shop in 1966. Consequently Kandel gained cause célèbre in San Francisco during the hippie movement in Haight-Ashbury.

A student of Zen before she moved from her native New York City to San Francisco in the early 1960s; once in San Francisco she met the Beat poets Lew Welch and Gary Snyder and had a brief affair with Jack Kerouac, who immortalized Kandel as Ramona Schwartz in his novel Big Sur. She has been described as a second generation Beat writer who developed psychedelicized aesthetics in the style of Allen Ginsberg. She herself referred to her verse as holy erotica. Volume 1, No. 1 of the internet literary and erotic magazine, The Divine Animal, features Lenore Kandel and her work .

A speaker at the Human Be-In in the Golden Gate Park polo fields, January 14, 1967, and the only female to ever speak from the stage, Kandel defiantly read from The Love Book. She published one other book of poems, Word Alchemy in 1967. Other works include An Exquisite Navel, A Passing Dragon and A Passing Dragon Seen Again, published by Three Penny Press in 1959, although not so well known. She appears in the Kenneth Anger film Invocation of My Demon Brother, smoking a marijuana cigarette contained in a miniature skull, and she was one of 15 people interviewed in Voices from the Love Generation.

In 1970, Kandel was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident with her then-husband Billy Fritz (poet and member of the Hell’s Angels). But despite her withdrawal from public literary activism during her long recovery, she is known to have continued to write throughout her life. Although no new work has been published since; a limited edition of The Love Book was republished in 2003 by Superstition Street Press, a San Francisco publishing company.
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Combine Editions
Lenore Kandel’s books

Average rating: 4.17 · 250 ratings · 39 reviews · 17 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Beat Book by Anne Waldman (Editor), Luca Fontana (Translator), William S. Burroughs 4.09 avg rating — 608 ratings — published 1995 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Collected Poems of Lenore Kandel (Io Poetry Series) by Lenore Kandel, Diane di Prima (Preface) 4.23 avg rating — 65 ratings — published 2012 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Love Book 4.59 avg rating — 37 ratings — published 1966 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Word Alchemy really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 30 ratings — published 1967 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Follar con Amor by Lenore Kandel, Annalisa Marí Pegrum (Goodreads Author) (translator) 4.21 avg rating — 14 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Das Liebesbuch Wortalchemie 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Avant Garde, No. 1 by Lenore Kandel, Richard Lindner (Painter), Ralph Ginzburg (Editor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Bärte und braune Beutel 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Vision of the Skull of the Prophet 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Alchimie du mot by Lenore Kandel, Marie Schermesser (Translator) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars