The definitive collection of poems from an American original, Neeli Cherkovski. Neeli Cherkovski's SELECTED POEMS: 1959-2022 is the definitive collection from an American original. With his earliest poem in this volume beginning at age fourteen, Cherkovski reveals a youthful wisdom which grows throughout his career. For more than sixty years, Neeli has lived his life for the poem, chewing on the reality and wonder of being here, and the endless question of, what shall we do? His answer is clear: we must rejoice in the endless dilemma! In his foreword to SELECTED POEMS: 1959-2022, Charles Bernstein writes, "In Neeli Cherkovski's poetry, beat rhetoric melts into wild riffs then returns to metaphor; bunts, dodges, bows head in respect to disrespect: onward, impulse as image, becomes phrases, becomes sublime moment of stutter, stagger, implosion; till waves of loss get tossed in a walk down a lazy street, as memory of a friend, the darkening night of the soiled--soaring--souring--soul, the benediction of artfulness and refusal of refusal." "In Neeli Cherkovski's poetry, beat rhetoric melts into wild riffs then returns to metaphor; bunts, dodges, bows head in respect to disrespect: onward, impulse as image, becomes phrases, becomes sublime moment of stutter, stagger, implosion; till waves of loss get tossed in a walk down a lazy street, as memory of a friend, the darkening night of the soiled--soaring--souring--soul, the benediction of artfulness and refusal of refusal."--Charles Bernstein Poetry.

Poetry. Winner of the 2005 Pen Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Award for Poetry. From Los Angeles to San Francisco, from 1953 to now--Neeli Cherkovski uses bar scenes, cafe insights, family confessions, heartbreak and redemption, meditations on morality and the acceptance of self to transform memory, time and myth into an intimate poetic-memoir. He creates a window to the past and explores how time has shaped who he has become. It is here--the power of Cherkovski's talent surfaces. It is here he finds himself, like an old friend in a warm embrace, LEANING AGAINST TIME.

Poetry. ELEGY FOR BOB KAUFMAN is poetry of elegance and feeling, a beautiful tribute to a "gone world." It speaks to the author's youthful memories of a great poet, Bob Kaufman--an enormously complex and difficult man. Cherkovski brings to life San Francisco's bohemian community in the late fifties and early sixties. "Neeli Cherkovski has written a magnificent tribute to the memory of Bob Kaufman. Neeli and Bob were close friends and true colleagues in the art of poetry. This gathering of poems is an expression of an era in San Francisco's North Beach literary community. I recommend it to all readers"--Eileen Kaufman.

Poetry. The latest collection from prolific poet, literary chronicler, and man on the scene, Neeli Cherkovski, pays homage to his aging and gone friends from the heyday of all their lives, contemplates upon his own dwindling days, celebrates each moment passing by, and attempts to come to grips with ultimate ends. Neeli Cherkovski was born a poet and through hard, lifelong work, turned himself into a constant maker. These poems result from a close alignment between fingers, pencil, paper, and brain.