Lenore Kandel

Lenore Kandel (January 14, 1932 in New York City – October 18, 2009 in San Francisco, California) was an American poet, affiliated with the Beat Generation and Hippie counterculture.

Her first works of poetry were the chapbooks An Exquisite Navel, A Passing Dragon, and A Passing Dragon Seen Again, published in 1959. Several of her poems also appeared in Beat and Beatific II in 1959.

Kandel moved from her native New York City to San Francisco in 1960. There she met Jack Kerouac, who later immortalized her as Romana Swartz, "a big Rumanian monster beauty," in his novel Big Sur (1962). In the novel, she is described as being the girlfriend of Dave Wain, who was based on Lew Welch. "Dave" describes how she walked around the "Zen-East House" wearing only purple panties. Kerouac described her as "intelligent, well read, writes poetry, is a Zen student, knows everything [...]" (Big Sur, p. 75).

Kandel was briefly notorious as the author of a short book of poetry, The Love Book. A small pamphlet consisting of four poems, The Love Book provoked censorship with its poem, "To Fuck with Love." Police seized the work as being in violation of state obscenity codes, from both City Lights Books and The Psychedelic Shop in 1966. Subsequently Kandel gained cause célèbre status. She herself defended her verse as "holy erotica." A jury declared the book obscene and lacking in any redeeming social value in 1967 and sales increased; Kandel thanked the police by giving one percent of all profits to the Police Retirement Association. The decision was overturned on appeal and the book continued to sell well.

Along with Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Michael McClure and others, Kandel was a speaker at the Human Be-In in the Golden Gate Park polo fields on January 14, 1967. The only woman to speak from the stage, Kandel defiantly read from The Love Book. It was her 35th birthday, and McClure later stated, "The entire crowd of 20,000 or 30,000 people sang 'Happy Birthday' to her."

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