Cherkovski, Neeli

Broadside: Street Poetry Broadside (April 13, 1975)

San Francisco, CA: 1975. First Edition. “I met Neeli early on and we became ‘compatriots’ almost immediately. He was really the person who introduced me to everyone and to what was going on in San Francisco during my first weeks and months there. In that sense he was very generous with his time and energy (which he had a lot of in those days). He was already entrenched in the literary life, having come up from Los Angeles and the scene there with Charles Bukowski, Paul Vangelisti and others—and was making a life for himself in San Francisco with the long-term in mind. My first response to Neeli was that he was a lot like a young version of Allen Ginsberg. A kind of publicist and traffic cop for what was going on around him. This kind of energy and enthusiasm attracted all kinds of people, both younger and older than him. In this sense, it wouldnt be wrong to say that he was the “spark” that ignited much of what happened during those years. His energy was contagious and he was someone who always had lots of ideas. He was often the “idea man” behind things that would eventually take place in North Beach and beyond. He identified strongly with the gay community, the gay poets and writers and–like writers of the generation before him–wrote often about love and the gay experience. But he wasnt snobbish or confined by his sexual preferences and could mix with any crowd or in any kind of environment.”--Thomas Rain Crowe, Thomas Rain Crowe Archive, pg 17. Offered today is a truly unique and rare item, Children of Whitman for Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1975) by American poet and memoirist Neeli Cherkovski (1945–2024). This street poetry broadside is Cherkovski’s immediate reaction to Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s (1919–2021) masterwork, The Populist Manifesto, in which Ferlinghetti prods and provokes the younger poets of Thomas’s generation to enhance their engagement with poetry and activism, to get out in the streets and abandon the academic ivory tower poetry had turned into. Cherkovski’s response, immortalized in this unpublished poem, more or less, is saying to Ferlinghetti: “we’re already doing it, you’re just not paying enough attention.” Children of Whitman for Lawrence Ferlinghetti is bold, impassioned, zealous, and burns with the poetic fervor that Ferlinghetti seems to be begging to see from younger poets in his Populist Manifesto. From the archive of Thomas Rain Crowe, scholar, writer and member of the Baby Beat Generation. For more information on the Thomas Rain Crowe archive (assembled & curated by Third Mind Books), see our book Starting From San Francisco: Thomas Rain Crowe in Conversation with Third Mind Books (item #3071) & the catalog for the Crowe archive (see item #1010), which contains several excerpts and quotations from the book as well as a full listing of the archive’s contents, which are now being offered for sale individually on the Third Mind Books site. Stapled sheets with facsimile handwritten title "Street Poetry Broadside," dated "13 Ap(ril) 1975." First & only printing. In very fine condition with only minor wear to fine edges, slight discoloration due to age, and moderate rusting at staple. Very Fine. [Item #7511]

Price: $40.00