About this Item
First edition, first printing, a rare presentation copy, inscribed at the foot of the last page, "a gift to Urban Ecology House from Sam and Irving". Irving Rosenthal was a founder-member of the San Francisco Sutter/Scott Street commune (known by members as the Friends of Perfection), established in 1967. As a student, he was poetry editor for the Chicago Review, but the paper's attempt to censor Beat writers prompted Rosenthal and many of his friends to resign. He co-founded Big Table and went on to create the Free Print Shop, the publishing arm of the Sutter/Scott Street commune. The Free Print Shop offered services to San Francisco communes in addition to publishing its own weekly inter-communal newsletter, Kaliflower. The paper was published between April 1969 and December 1971 and, at its height, was delivered to more than 300 communes. It was so popular that the Sutter Street commune is still widely referred to as the Kaliflower commune. The newsletter carried ideas, requests, and news between San Francisco's network of communes. Publication stopped in 1971 when the editors "realized we were working for a largely anonymous readership - something we had never intended to do". They suspended publication with the intention "to re-state, in a simple and condensed form, the main insights about communal living that had appeared in it". It took them seven years to sift through and select works from their back issues to create this book, a beautiful visual record of a key Haight-Ashbury-era publication. As with the newsletters, the book does not credit artists or authors. Rosenthal disliked signing his work and refused requests from friends; this copy is inscribed on his behalf by Sam, Rosenthal's "right-hand man"(Aronson). The recipients were Urban Ecology House, a San Francisco non-profit founded in 1975 which aims to help create more sustainable cities. Philippe Aronson, "Tracking Down My Literary Idol to a San Francisco Commune", Lit Hub, 28 Aug. 2019. Quarto. Vividly illustrated in colour throughout, one page illustrated with silver foil. Original grey cloth, illustration of a woman's head with hair spelling "Kaliflower" printed in black and white on front cover, extending over spine and rear cover, grey endpapers. Edges of covers faintly toned with a few marks: a near-fine copy.
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