Love is a Four Letter Word

On Monday, Rob made a list of female authors and artists of the beat movement, that have been often overlooked. He mentioned Joyce Johnson, Joanne Kyger, Anne Waldman, Jan Keroac, and others. I have started looking through the list of women, Lenore Kandel stood out to me. I found a great article about the poet on website http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=LENORE_KANDEL.

I had not heard of her, or her book of poetry "The Love Book", and after hearing about Ginsberg's "Howl" I thought that San Francisco had risen above banning books. But Kandel's book was banned in 1967, the midst of the hippie movement, for provoking sexual desire, and a lack of 'redeeming social importance', much the same as Ginsberg's was tried for. During the trial Kandel appeared and, rather than reading the poems in the reckless and immoral attitude she was accused of having, she read the books in a refined manner, "more reverent than passionate". According to the article, she also read erotic poetry from Brother Antoninus and others in an effort to show her beliefs in the unity of sex and spirituality. She claimed that "everyone who makes love is religious", but that "Love is a four letter word", especially in the times of the 60's, and she stated that instead words inciting violence, such as hate, should be looked at as obscene.

Unlike Ginsberg's trial, however, her book was concluded to be obscene, and was banned until 1971, when the ruling was overturned, and subsequently sold "over 20,000 copies". I could not find any full examples of her poems to put up here, I will have to check the library when I am back in town in case it has any copies, then I will put one up.

One other benefit of looking up Lenore Kandel is stumbling across http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Main_Page. The website is a Wiki site of sorts, but entirely about San Francisco, with a broad range of decades, neighborhoods, and themes such as anarchism. The articles are also sourced, so this is a perfect site for anybody doing research projects in order to dig up further information.

-Karl