Seth Amos
Neeli Cherkovski: Poet at Table 13
It was a Friday night in July 2014, around 7:30, and the dinner rush was just beginning. Two men were seated at a small table in my section. I thought nothing of them at first glance. They were bodies in seats, and I was working. I greeted them; asked them if they preferred still or sparkling water. Upon returning I noticed a small notebook and a copy of Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems on the table. I was intrigued.
I must note: It is unusual nowadays for someone to place a book on their table. Modern dining etiquette now allows no less than one electronic device per person per seat. The cell phone is now placed somewhere between the wine glass and the soupspoon. Keys are permitted miscellany, but you can tell nobody enjoys their presence.
I asked the two gentlemen to whom did the book belong; one of them, donning suspenders and a lapis beret kicked with a perfect tilt, said it was his. I commented that he had a fine taste in poetry. “Ah, you know him?” he said, drawing out the open-mouthed “a.” I said I did. He asked my name; I gave it. I asked his; he said he was Neeli Cherkovski.
He asked what other poets I liked from that time period and pushed back at my omission of a few heavies. I pushed back at his inclusion of them as such. All the while, the other gentleman, Jessie Cabrera, Neeli’s partner of more than thirty years, sat quietly with a subtle grin as he alternated between listening and reading the dinner menu.
I forgot my tables—I didn’t so much forget, as I didn’t care—but I had to tear myself away momentarily to attend to them. When I came back to Neeli’s table, he didn’t have food on his mind, but poetry. It came out that we shared a love of Ezra Pound. Neeli began reciting from The Cantos:
What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross.
He did so with aplomb and abandon. A subtle gesticulation of the hand helped the words dance from his bearded mouth. I, in my apron, started in with a few opening lines of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley:
For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead
Art of poetry; to maintain “the sublime”
In the old sense. Wrong from the start--
and then the loose skin dangling from a customer’s waving arm interrupted me. I was peeved; I hate leaving a thought, especially a poem, unfinished.
At this point in the evening, Neeli and Jessie had their iced teas and entrees. Neeli took breaks to pull a fountain pen from his shirt pocket and write a few lines. I smirked to see this; it was a foreshadowing of sorts. I’m already guilty of such dinner-time behavior, but at that moment I saw myself hunched over a table with my ink-stained hands scribbling a stanza or a word while using the action of chewing my food as a metronome.
Poetry pours out of Neeli Cherkovski. He is always writing. Often you can see the lines in his eyes, even while you are talking to him. You hope it is something you said that triggered this inspiration, but it doesn’t matter. Chances are he will soon share a new poem with you via email. Perhaps it contains the word, line, or stanza you saw scrawled on his pupils. My inbox is filled with poems from him. I do my best to keep up and give feedback, but it is difficult. I have a “Neeli” folder, and I visit it often. It is quite a thing to see a man inspired, to see the fruit of his mind’s labor, and for him to share it with you. It is not to be taken lightly.
The first time I was invited for coffee at his house we sat in his garden and sipped espresso from tiny white cups. I learned the history of each curlicue of steam as Neeli, with his glasses removed, moved his thick pointer finger over his phone looking for a poem to read. He was speaking softly and from his beard, and I was nervous to talk poetry with the man who had just shown me his bookshelves, one of which—an armoire of sorts—was filled with unstable stacks signed first editions from some of his friends: among them Harold Norse, Gregory Corso, and Charles Bukowski. He also showed me a photo album filled with pictures of Bukowski (Hank, to Neeli) and him. It was a new experience to meet someone who knew some of the centuries great poets, and who called them by their first names: “Allen would always…”; “Gregory once told me…”; “Once, Hank and I got into a boxcar with a case of Miller High Life…”
Coffee in Neeli’s garden could be many things, but it will never lack in conversation. A talk about the Old Testament could have him reciting in Hebrew the first five verses of the book of Genesis. At any moment a line or an entire poem might be recited; recitations are always acceptable. They are the great conversational segue.
Neeli has this way of talking to the air that makes you feel it’s intentional. He knows you’re there, but he likes to let the story linger as he tells it. The more his thoughts go toward poetry, the deeper into the air he speaks, as though sending them further into it gave them more room and more respect. Neeli’s thoughts are never too far from poetry, so the air gets a great deal of attention, and oddly enough, so do you. Yet when he reads a poem, he’s alone. This is what rapture does to a man, and it is all but extinct these days. He runs his fingers through his hoary, artistically disheveled hair, blindly leaving it as it falls or stands. His hands are often covered in various shades of ink; some of his shirt pockets are also blotted with hurried pen cappings and removals. But this is all to a beautiful end as you sit and listen to or read his words; the stains are key points in telling the story of a man wholly dedicated to his craft.
I don’t know how many writers have met by one serving the other in a restaurant. I’m sure the percentage is quite small, if it deserves a percentage at all. But, since that first meeting, Neeli and I have become poetry confidants and friends. His is an opinion that matters, and he freely offers it. To sip coffee at a garden table with him is to be an audience while books are written. To have him read your poem is to distance yourself far enough from your work so as to achieve clarity. It is often the poet’s error, an inescapable one at times, to get too close to the lines, to not see what lives (or could live or doesn’t need to live) in the space between them as much as the life the words themselves provide. Neeli inhabits this world. He will pull you out of it so he can ultimately take you closer to it. It is wise to let him.