The Love Book [together with news clippings about the subsequent trial for obscenity] by Kandel, Lenore - 1966

San Francisco: Stolen Paper Review Editions, 1966. 6p. printed recto-only, 7.25x8 inches, variant with blue and brown covers, blue endpapers; some foxing inside front cover, otherwise very good. Also included are 21 pages of notebook paper with newspaper clippings about the 1967 trial that surrounded this publication; the clerks at the two shops were ultimately found guilty of distributing pornography, but the suppression of this booklet marked the last time San Francisco prosecuted an author on obscenity charges. Explicit erotic poetry inspired by tantric traditions, which landed the poet and publisher in court for obscenity in one of the two major counterculture poetry trials of the '60s (the more famous case being Ginsberg's "Howl"). Kandel's chapbook had only sold about one hundred copies before the November 15, 1966 police busts at the Psychedelic Shop and City Lights, but after media coverage began the booklet flew off the shelves. The author then pledged to donate 1% of proceeds to a police retirement fund to "thank" them for the free publicity. Kandel had ties with some of the Beats as well as the Diggers; she was the only woman to speak from the stage at the Human Be-In in 1967 (reading from "To Fuck With Love," the poem in this chapbook that had caused the ruckus). Jack Kerouac's character Romana Swartz in the novel Big Sur is based on her.