The Brooklyn Rail

I met Neeli a few years back and was immediately engaged by his personality.

We read together in the backyard of the old location of Unnameable Books on Vanderbilt Avenue. It was a pleasant evening, and I enjoyed hanging out with Neeli and Jesse afterward. We stayed in touch, and I felt honored to be included on Neeli’s regular email blasts of new poems. I always tried to respond quickly, as I thought it was such a gesture of openness and trust on his part to share his newest work like that.

As I got to know Neeli’s work better, I found he had early connections to the art world through the painter Herman Cherry and the literary world through Charles Bukowski. Neeli, Bukowski, and Paul Vangelisti edited a seminal anthology of Los Angeles poetry in 1972. Neeli was a biographer of Bukowski and of Beat icon Lawrence Ferlinghetti and a carrier of the flame himself, as evidenced by his 2018 collection, Elegy for my Beat Generation, published by Lithic Press. Neeli was also the author of Whitman’s Wild Children, a collection of essays on Beat and San Francisco Renaissance poets.

Neeli was one of those essential mid-century travelers, like David Meltzer and Wallace Berman, who could move from arid and modern Los Angeles to the lush and dreamy San Francisco Bay Area. Not everyone can do that.

I was impressed by Neeli’s enthusiasm for reaching out to other poets. This enthusiasm is documented in the terrific book of conversations between Clark Coolidge and Neeli: Coolidge & Cherkovski: In Conversation (Lithic, 2020).

Neeli was a lyric poet. He allowed his spirit free reign in words, usually in tightly reined-in lines that flowed within and beyond their bounds.

The final stanza of Neeli’s poem “What’s in an Elegy?”, the last poem in Elegy for my Beat Generation, reads:

there is a “yes” and a “no,” you’ll find
damnation or redemption, it depends
on state of mind, many acacia trees
in the park, green benches await
unbridled freedom provides a song

I’ll miss Neeli’s enthusiasm, and his warmth.