Neeli Cherkovski (born Nelson Innis Cherry; July 1, 1945 – March 19, 2024) was an American poet and memoirist, who resided from 1975 onwards in San Francisco.
[2] Cherkovski was educated at California State University, Los Angeles, and briefly attended Hebrew Union College.
[2] In the 1970s, he was a political consultant in the Riverside area, who came to San Francisco to work on the staff of then-State Senator George Moscone.
[2] Cherkovski wrote biographies of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Charles Bukowski,[3] with whom he co-edited the Los Angeles magazine Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns.
"[5] Cherkovski was the author of Whitman's Wild Children, a collection of essays about twelve poets he had known: Michael McClure, Bukowski, John Wieners, James Broughton, Philip Lamantia, Bob Kaufman, Allen Ginsberg, William Everson, Gregory Corso, Harold Norse, Jack Micheline, and Ferlinghetti.