During the mid-to-late 1970s, some of the featured poets included Miguel Algarín, Miguel Piñero, Pedro Pietri, Victor Hernández Cruz, Diane Burns, Tato Laviera, Piri Thomas, Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, Sandra María Esteves, and José Angel Figueroa.

The second wave of major Nuyorican Poets, featured at the cafe, emerged, including Nancy Mercado, Giannina Braschi, and Martín Espada.

The Nuyorican Poets Cafe counts poetry activists such as Bob Holman, Carl Hancock Rux, Saul Williams, Sarah Jones, Emanuel Xavier, and Beau Sia as former slammasters and was the home to the now mobile Nuyorican freestyle battle program Braggin' Rites.

[3] At some point in its early history, a Nuyorican chant emerged to precede the Open Room slam performances as a transition from the intense dancing present at the Cafe into a more quiet listening experience.

[9] From 1982 to 1989, the Café was shut down but Nuyorican poetry continued through this time to become part of the foundation of a newly forming literary canon.

The Café itself played large part in solidifying the Nuyorican movement and the performance element it emphasized reveals themes of visibility and voice.

[10] He wanted the Café to be a community-oriented space and his own experience with slam poetry as oral, active, engaging, and connecting influenced this choice.

Algarín’s editorial categories include themes of inner city tragedy and politics, gender plays, and hip hop and rap.

Nuyorican poetry of the 1990s era was focused on breaking down political, social, cultural, and racial boundaries between individuals and groups in the United States.

Directed, produced, and edited by Ray Santisteban, the documentary features founder Miguel Algarín, along with Willie Perdomo, Ed Morales, Pedro Pietri, and Carmen Bardeguez Brown.

Directed by Paul Devlin, the documentary follows Nuyorican poetry slam founder Bob Holman and the poets of the 1996 Nuyorican team (Saul Williams, Beau Sia, Jessica Care Moore and muMs da Schemer) as they compete in the 1996 National Poetry Slam held in Portland, Oregon.

by Giannina Braschi features a dramatic scene of a Spanglish poetry reading at the Nuyorican Poets Café with founder Pedro Pietri who is also a character in the play United States of Banana.

[14][15] León Ichaso's 2001 film Piñero features reenacted scenes of poetry readings by Miguel Piñero of “Seeking the Cause” and “A Lower East Side Poem”; at the end of the film, co-founders of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and other prominent poets, including Miguel Algarín, Amiri Baraka, José-Angel Figueroa, and Pedro Pietri, lead a funeral procession and scatter Piñero's ashes on the streets of the Lower East Side.