Mr. Cannon often announced himself in phone calls as “the Blind Guy.” Some people called him “the Professor” or “the Heckler,” a reference to his presence at the nearby Nuyorican Poets Cafe, known for its raucous poetry slams.

Mr. Cannon was a fixture at the corner of the cafe’s bar, a grinning, roistering figure wearing sunglasses and a string of beads who would cock his head toward the stage when poets read their verses.

When he believed that a poet was too halting or tentative, he’d shout, “Read the goddamn poem!” — sometimes he would substitute a more profane adjective — his voice often trailing off into an infectious cackle.

Bob Holman, who founded the Bowery Poetry Club, said that he and Mr. Cannon started a workshop in the early ′90s called “The Stoop,” which they held on the front steps of the Third Street building. First a poet would read a work in progress aloud; then Mr. Cannon, listening intently, would ask a second person to recite the same words.

“Steve’s aural acuity was extraordinary,” Mr. Holman said. “From those two readings he would start an analysis that would then bring the rest of the poets sitting around into a conversation that had to do with the essence of the poem and what it really did in the air, in the world.”

Faced with significant debt, Mr. Cannon sold the building in 2004 but rented one of its floors and remained there until 2014, when he moved out after a long dispute with the owner. He spent his last years in an apartment on East Sixth Street. He continued to hold gatherings there, though they were smaller than the ones in his old home. He sometimes recited his work in other venues.