Michael Berger
My Friend, Neeli Cherkovski
Over the past decade, San Francisco has come under attack from an economic elite that has little to no respect for the cultural diversity and artistic vitality that gives the city its soul. But many of its hardscrabble citizens still possess the keys to the magic city. Poet, painter, essayist and man of letters, Neeli Cherkovski is one of them. Through him, the San Francisco that many of us dream about – a rugged haven for artists, immigrants, craftsmen, pilgrims, and dreamers– still flourishes. In his poems and stories, through his friendships and conversations and, above all, his wisdom the city salvages its best parts.
I first met Neeli through his wily dog, Cosmo, who leapt gleefully one day at the counter of the bookstore I worked at in Bernal Heights, San Francisco where Neeli still lives. He had heard that I was a writer so he ambled on down and introduced himself, and his dog. With a generosity and an enthusiasm that first took me aback, he offered to read some of my work. Indeed, he seemed genuinely thrilled that I wanted to share it with him. Although three decades separated us in age, I saw in him (and still do) a youthful, contagious vitality that I both admired and envied. With this poet, the habit of art– and especially of poetry – is an exhilarating, hourly expedition of the soul in which one must find fellow journeyers. Above all, he emphasized the work of making poetry is a constant process that, by necessity, needs to involve many collaborators and allies.
We became friends, and several afternoons a month I walked from the bookstore to his book-and-art-filled house to talk for hours over espressos. I had never spent time in the house of a writer who is a celebrated younger member of the Beat generation of San Francisco. I also hadn’t ever talked craft with a poet of his extraordinary lyrical range and output before. A counter-cultural history of my favorite city was brought to life in the rooms of his house, where photos of his friends, late and living, crowded the walls: photos of Neeli with Bob Kaufman, Charles Bukowksi, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima, among others. As well, Neeli’s own drawings and paintings were everywhere. And of course the books, many of them rare first editions, signed by his close friends. Neeli would eagerly show me a novel I must read or a philosopher I need to study or a poem that might help clarify something missing in my own work.
I was entranced by such glorious evidence of a life spent making art and poetry, fighting oppressive social conventions and keeping areas of the world safe for creators and dissidents. Whenever I visit Neeli in his home, and we move through the various rooms, I feel I am becoming immersed in a condensed version of San Francisco at its most spiritually alive. In the Bernal Heights neighborhood, where he has lived with his partner for several years, and where I lived and worked for half a dozen, San Francisco retains an image of an improvised community of radical wayfarers and visionary makers. Now, as I live and work in Las Vegas, some of my fondest memories are from that green, misty hill neighborhood where I first met this elder poet.
Our conversations tended to spill out onto his flowering patio and down into the yard. Those blooming plants in the background complemented our excited talks about German philosophy, Gregory Corso’s poetry, Becket’s letters, Italian coffee and everything else that mattered. Our talks provided me with a full, and open-ended curriculum as an emerging poet and writer. Not only has Neeli provided me, and numerous other writers, with an aesthetic and lyrical arsenal (that eventually helped land me in the Creative Writing MFA program I am finishing now in Las Vegas) but also with a philosophical and ethical worldview in which art and speculation, vision and politics are ineluctably wedded. His enthusiasm is always rugged, too, and not one to shirk the sometimes harsh realties of trying to be an artist in the 21st century world. There is a vitality in his talks that is something both extremely modern and also wildly archaic, as if Neeli’s words are a bridge from our most necessary pasts into our most promising futures. His natural inclination toward friendship is, itself, a radical gesture and for many of his friends, this becomes, too, an even more radical gesture of mentorship.
I first met Neeli through his wily dog, Cosmo, who leapt gleefully one day at the counter of the bookstore I worked at in Bernal Heights, San Francisco where Neeli still lives. He had heard that I was a writer so he ambled on down and introduced himself, and his dog. With a generosity and an enthusiasm that first took me aback, he offered to read some of my work. Indeed, he seemed genuinely thrilled that I wanted to share it with him. Although three decades separated us in age, I saw in him (and still do) a youthful, contagious vitality that I both admired and envied. With this poet, the habit of art– and especially of poetry – is an exhilarating, hourly expedition of the soul in which one must find fellow journeyers. Above all, he emphasized the work of making poetry is a constant process that, by necessity, needs to involve many collaborators and allies.
We became friends, and several afternoons a month I walked from the bookstore to his book-and-art-filled house to talk for hours over espressos. I had never spent time in the house of a writer who is a celebrated younger member of the Beat generation of San Francisco. I also hadn’t ever talked craft with a poet of his extraordinary lyrical range and output before. A counter-cultural history of my favorite city was brought to life in the rooms of his house, where photos of his friends, late and living, crowded the walls: photos of Neeli with Bob Kaufman, Charles Bukowksi, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima, among others. As well, Neeli’s own drawings and paintings were everywhere. And of course the books, many of them rare first editions, signed by his close friends. Neeli would eagerly show me a novel I must read or a philosopher I need to study or a poem that might help clarify something missing in my own work.
I was entranced by such glorious evidence of a life spent making art and poetry, fighting oppressive social conventions and keeping areas of the world safe for creators and dissidents. Whenever I visit Neeli in his home, and we move through the various rooms, I feel I am becoming immersed in a condensed version of San Francisco at its most spiritually alive. In the Bernal Heights neighborhood, where he has lived with his partner for several years, and where I lived and worked for half a dozen, San Francisco retains an image of an improvised community of radical wayfarers and visionary makers. Now, as I live and work in Las Vegas, some of my fondest memories are from that green, misty hill neighborhood where I first met this elder poet.
Our conversations tended to spill out onto his flowering patio and down into the yard. Those blooming plants in the background complemented our excited talks about German philosophy, Gregory Corso’s poetry, Becket’s letters, Italian coffee and everything else that mattered. Our talks provided me with a full, and open-ended curriculum as an emerging poet and writer. Not only has Neeli provided me, and numerous other writers, with an aesthetic and lyrical arsenal (that eventually helped land me in the Creative Writing MFA program I am finishing now in Las Vegas) but also with a philosophical and ethical worldview in which art and speculation, vision and politics are ineluctably wedded. His enthusiasm is always rugged, too, and not one to shirk the sometimes harsh realties of trying to be an artist in the 21st century world. There is a vitality in his talks that is something both extremely modern and also wildly archaic, as if Neeli’s words are a bridge from our most necessary pasts into our most promising futures. His natural inclination toward friendship is, itself, a radical gesture and for many of his friends, this becomes, too, an even more radical gesture of mentorship.