"By mid-February 1964 the New York Poets Theatre was back in action. We had prepared for months: chosen plays, arranged them in programs, and cast them, and Alan had gone into full swing right after New Years, raising money based on our nonprofit status. [...]

Alan found us a venue, the New Bowery Theatre on St. Marks Place off of Third Avenue, and we rented it for a four-month season, February through May. Unlike the East Tenth Street scene of 1961, this was a real theatre, with a hanging sign, and a stoop, entry and lobby and seats and a proscenium stage. [...]

We did the plays on weekends, mostly Friday and Saturday nights, and turned the week nights over to various other programs. Jonas Mekas' Cinematheque showed short experimental movies on Monday nights; and there was a night for new dance, and a night for new music (mostly taped, played on the new "synthesizers," or composed using random techniques). John McDowell organized these for a while and then for a time LeRoi ran a jazz series. On Sunday afternoons we had poetry readings, often in the midst of the set of one of the plays. If there was a "dark" night we used it to rehearse the plays, as not everyone could come to the afternoon rehearsals that we mainly depended on.

We used the place around the clock, and used every inch of the space. The lobby became a de facto art gallery, and we had a couple of art shows, though we had the problem that our audience, many of whom were on speed, lack a certain quality of discrimination and a couple of times made off with their favorite collage. There was very little moral sense in at least the fringe of this crowd. Things simply disappeared. We called it "knick-knacking" and mostly laughed it off, though when what was missing was a prop we needed that very night, or a serious painting or photo by a master artist, we took it a bit more seriously. [...]

We had a wide and varied audience altogether. In fact if our landlady had ever come off her high horse and stopped smelling the theatre curatin, even she might have found some of it impressive. Bankers, Broadway producers, an East European princess, and many patrons of the arts and gallery owners supported us and came to all the plays, as well as famous and not so famous musicians, painters and writers. A typical evening in the lobby [...] would have seen Larry Rivers, Morris Golde, Panna Grady, Cecil Taylor, Richard Lippold, Joan Mitchell, any number of dancers, poets, what-have-you hobnobbing and flirting as they waited for the lights to flicker. [...]

Checking out old flyers and programs, I see that all this happened in a shorter time than I imagined. No more than two months and the New Bowery Theatre was lost to us, a sign on the locked door saying "This Poets' Theatre Closed By Order of Police." -- Diane di Prima. Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years. New York: Viking, 2001.