Robert Hershon, a poet who as a founder of Hanging Loose Press, furthered the careers of countless other poets, died on March 20 at a hospital in Brooklyn. He was 84.

Mr. Hershon published more than a dozen collections of his own poems, works that could be amusing, touching or both. He was also godfather of sorts to many younger poets through Hanging Loose Press, a publication so informal that its editorial meetings were held in McSorley’s, an East Village bar, The New York Times said.

Hershon felt it should be the mission of small literary presses to discover and champion new voices…otherwise “What’s the point of their existence,” he said. “His preference was for poetry that didn’t take itself too seriously, but was energetic and inventive in both form and language; nothing pompous or stuffy or smelling of the library,” said the poet Mark Pawlak.