Neeli Cherry

San Francisco poet Neeli Cherkovski died March 19, 2024 at San Francisco General Hospital after complications from a heart attack. He was 78.

Neeli was born Nelson Innis Cherry on July 1, 1945 to Clare (neé Wietzman) and Sam Cherry in Santa Monica, California. His mother and father were part of the Black Cat Café scene in San Francisco’s North Beach throughout the late 30’s and early 40’s. It was a vital epicenter of queer bohemian life at the time, and this heritage was foundational to Neeli’s life work. They also owned Cherry Bookstore and Gallery in San Bernardino, where Neeli grew up. His uncle was New York abstract expressionist painter Herman Cherry, friend of Willem de Kooning. Neeli changed his surname back to Cherkovski in the 1970s to reclaim his family’s Ukrainian-Jewish ancestry. Neeli went on to become a prolific poet in the Whitmanic tradition. His literary scope was world wide, spanning generations. Such chief influences as William Butler Yeats, Pablo Neruda, and LiPo, he regarded as the pinnacle of poetic expression. He often recited these poets by heart and was never without them physically by his side when he sat down to write.

Cherkovski moved to San Francisco in the 1970s to work on the campaign of George Moscone. He soon abandoned politics for the cafés of North Beach where he fell in with brother poets Jack Hirschman, Bob Kaufman, and Gregory Corso, among many others, with whom he shared decades of friendship. Cherkovski also was the biographer of his friends Charles Bukowski and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Neeli met his partner Jesse Cabrera in Los Angeles and they shared 37 years together at their home in Bernal Heights.

Cherkovksi is the author of numerous books of poetry including Elegy for Bob Kaufman and Hang on to the Yangtze River, as well as a collection of essays chronicling the lives of twelve poets of post-beat bohemia called Whitman’s Wild Children. His Selected Poems 1954-2023 is forthcoming from Lithic Press and a book of portrait poems from City Lights will be published in July 2025, on what would have been the poet’s 80th birthday.

Neeli is survived by his partner Dr. Jesus (Jesse) Guinto Cabrera, of San Francisco; sister Tanya Tull, of Los Angeles; nephew Dani Tull, of Los Angeles; niece Deborah Eden Tull, of Black Mountain, North Carolina; niece Rebecca Tull Yates, of Los Angeles; nephew James Clark, of New York; his grand-niece and nephew Olivia-Rose Tull and Julian Yates, of Los Angeles; along with myriad friends, fellow poets, and his students from the New College of California.

Neeli wanted his ashes spread at sea in the San Francisco Bay where he will join his comrades Jack Hirschman and Bob Kaufman. A memorial poetry event will be organized in the coming months, to be announced.

Neeli believed that all poets are writing verses to one immense poem. San Francisco’s long lineage of Beat poetry has come to a close with his death. Meanwhile, a new one is just burgeoning among the young poets he brought into the bohemian fold.