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Neeli was very good at doing impressions and it was a treat to hear him tell the story of Jack Hirschman calling him on the telephone after Hirschman learned he had been named Poet Laureate of San Francisco.
Hirschman apparently said, “Neeli, how are you feeling?”
Neeli gave his rendition the full Bronx treatment, drawing out the double e in both “Neeli” and “feeling” so they practically rhymed.
Neeli did an impression of his friend, Agneta Falk, that beautifully captured her husky British-inflected English.
“Hello, Daaaharling.”
One of Neeli’s personal favorites was, for some obscure reason, an impression of the poet Gerry Nicosia’s mother. He imbued her voice with all of the emotion of a harassed parent. Nobody can bring up the accompanying anecdote but everybody remembers the tagline.
“Gerry’s never been very athletic.”
But Neeli’s best impression, by far, was of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Lawrence’s voice was thin, reedy, and pitched on the high side. It’s hard to describe but there was a whiney quality to it when he posed a question. It was also playful and vaguely feminine which contrasted with his essential seriousness and produced a comical effect when Neeli imitated him.
One day we were having lunch at Neeli’s house. I don’t remember who all was there but after lunch, four or five of us, including Jessica Loos, got in the car to go somewhere else. We were riding along and Neeli was holding forth as usual and I imagine he felt we weren’t giving him enough attention because he began loudly narrating our journey in Lawrence’s voice. It didn’t take us long to recognize it.
“We’re on a bridge but it’s not the Bixby Creek Bridge,” he complained.
We chuckled.
Then he said, “We’re passing a house where they said I’m a Beat Poet, but I’m not a Beat Poet.”
He went on in this vein for a while until he got us laughing. There was a little lull in his narrative while we all considered Neeli’s wit and his charm. He’d completely seduced us.
Then in perfect imitation of Ferlinghetti, he said, “This is not the way to Coney Island.”
Judith Ayn Bernhard is the author of a poetry collection, Prisoners of Culture, and a book of short stories, Marriages. She is an editor of the Andover Street Archives Press.