Neeli Cherkovski grew up in Los Angeles where he edited The Anthology of Los Angeles Poets with Charles Bukowski and Paul Vangelisti. He moved to San Francisco in 1974 where he was associated with Jack Hirschman, David Meltzer, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, and a whole tribe of poets. His essay collection Whitman's Wild Children, originally published in 1989, with expanded subsequent reissues, provides intimate portraits of many of these contemporaries. In 2019 he co-edited The Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman, another close friend. Cherkovski's poems have been translated into Italian, German, Spanish, Turkish, and French. His most recent poetry collections are Elegy for my Beat Generation and Hang onto the Yangtze River (Lithic Press, Fruita Colorado) His Round Your Tongue: New and Selected Poems, 1959-2021, is also forthcoming from Lithic Press.