Rest in Peace, Steve Cannon (1935–2019)

Poet, writer, and gallery owner Steve Cannon, long based in New York, has died at the age of 84, reports The Villager. Known for founding A Gathering of the Tribes, and for his presence at the Nyuorican Poets Cafe, Cannon's early days included collaborations with artists and poets like David Hammons and Ishmael Reed, even if his unease with artists was documented. "I feel safe around musicians and poets," he once told the New York Times. "I’m serious, if an artist is coming down the street, I'll duck behind a car." From The Villager's report:

[East Village performance artist David] Leslie originally met Cannon when Leslie asked him to be on the advisory board of the first HOWL! Festival of East Village Arts in the 2000s.

“Everybody’s got the same story about how he was such a hard ass on young poets,” Leslie said. “But those are the guys you learn from.”

Indeed, poet/playwright Liza Jessie Peterson posted a fond recollection on Facebook of Cannon at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe shouting at young poets to dispense with the introductions and explanations of their work and “Just read the damn poem!”

“He was definitely a guide. He gave counsel,” she said. “He was just on the surface like that —  really mean, a strict teacher. But he brought out the best in you. He was tough, he wasn’t mean. He just raised the standard. He gave us, like backbone, courage, to get up there and just, ‘Read the goddamn poem!’ … He would just scream it.”

Cannon would sit at the corner of the bar and was the toughest critic in the place.

“It was like Steve’s sacred spot at the bar,” she recalled. “This was in the ’90s, you could still smoke inside places. He was just this Lower East Side cat. He just had a keen ear. When you’re blind, it heightens the other senses. He didn’t want no bull crap: Just get up on that microphone. He’d be sitting there with Lois, and they ran the Nuyorican. Steve, Lois, Pepe and Julio — they held it up.

“We were young, full of fire. He gave us tough love,” she added...

Read on here. Our condolences to friends, family, and poets all around. He will be missed.