I saw a fool dance up a hill
Where ice gleamed all around
While high above a full moon beamed
Its pillar to the ground
& in that moonbeam’s silver light
That fool blew on his flute
As a scraggly cur growled deep & grred
& leaped against his boot
Excerpt from “Fools’ Crossing” by Michael Castro
I had heard that Michael was suffering from cancer, so while I was not surprised, I was saddened to hear of his passing. I never met him personally, but we knew of each other and he was a contributor to 2Leaf Press. I learned about Michael through his close association with Shirley Bradley LeFlore, and later, other St. Louis poets. When 2Leaf Press published Shirley’s poetry collection, Brassbones and Rainbows in 2013, Michael wrote a blurb caption for her book, which reads:
Shirley Bradley LeFlore has been regarded as a great poet performance poet and served her community, as few poets do, as unofficial spiritual minister, presiding at weddings, funerals and other significant life events. Here in her first full collection are essential poems to turn to and return to like valued friends. A book to be celebrated and treasured.
As few poets do. This is the key to Michael, that being a poet is more than just writing verse and self-promotion, that the very act of poetry itself is a political act of activism, and that even action can and should speak louder than words. People in the poetry world connect through the work, through the words, and often have very clear ideas of what a poet is and is not. Jesús Papoleto Meléndez and I have engaged in this conversation for years, and he has always believed that the responsibility of a true poet is to do something, to do good, to be true to themselves, their craft, and stand up for the community. Using poetry for good. Or to combat evil. Or what the late Louis Reyes Rivera often inspired many of us to do, which is to report what’s happening through poetry. Michael dared to write and perform poetry that crossed cultural lines, even when it was not popular to do so, with stinging rebuke to those that challenged the essence of humanity:
And so I must insist
BLACK LIVES MATTER
to those with dimes on their eyes
instead of Justice’s blindfolds,
to those armed with hair trigger tempers & the Law,
to those with weapons of disruption
on pads in their pockets,
& weapons of destruction on their hips,
to governments exploiting & terrorizing
their own citizens,
and to all those who, with comfortable opinions,
deny full humanity to another,
not knowing they deny their own:
Excerpt from “Report From the Streets Around Town” by Michael Castro (2015)
While Shirley opined why it was taking Michael so long to write the blurb caption for her book, after I finally saw it, I realized why: he was thinking, trying to get to the root of what it was about Shirley he admired as a fellow humanist poet, and it was the “do,” the doing that they both did for their communities, and often did together. This was the connection he was trying to convey in just a few sentences.
Michael was a Sephardic Jew from New York who was the last of a dying breed, a lefty who was an activist, teacher and mentor. When he came to St. Louis to go to school as a graduate student at Washington University, after receiving a PhD in American Literature that focused on Native American mythology and culture, he kind of never went back. Instead, he created a name for himself in St. Louis as a professor of English at University of Missouri–St. Louis, and then Lindenwood University. He was also one of the founders of River Styx, a literary magazine that has continuously published since its founding in 1975. It was a publication that organically developed from the poetry readings and gatherings he often participated in or organized, and initially developed into a radio show on KDNA-FM called “River Styx Poets.” When the radio station was sold in 1972, the poets began a literary press and a reading series.
Perhaps it was because he was a descendant of the golden age of Spain with Mediterranean Afro-Asian traditions that Michael became known for bringing people together of all stripes: black, white, poets, musicians and others, from the university and the streets. Shirley, who is a native of St. Louis, often served as Michael’s guide to the local poetry scene. In time, Michael created a name for himself that would become so embedded in the literary scene that when someone mentioned his name, it was synonymous with St. Louis.
Did I say I never met Michael personally? But we did meet, through poetry, his poetry. Great poetry makes readers and poets old friends. He even collaborated on Hungarian translations with Gabor G. Gyukics, whose work I published in phati’tude Literary Magazine back in the early 1990s, before I knew who Michael was. Connections exist all around us. So it was no surprise to me when jason vasser elong, an up and coming poet in St. Louis, asked Michael to write the introduction to his debut poetry collection, shrimp, for 2Leaf Press in 2018. In the introduction, as Michael assessed vasser elong’s work, he notes:
These are not the poems of an “angry Black man;” nevertheless, they are poems from a Black man’s perspective. When vasser-elong writes about “the struggle,” rather than anger and directness his approach tends to be understated, subtle and oblique. . . . And what better recommendation is there for a poet? jason vasser-elong is one who is willing to dig deeply into the dirt of his environment or the depths of his own consciousness. He leaves it to us to smell the flowers.
Always the teacher and mentor, Michael enjoyed helping others, especially young poets, find their voice. He believed artists should take a stand culturally and socially and change the world.
Michael’s poetry wasn’t all rah-rah-rah political messaging, he really was an ardent observer of humanity. He has written and performed poetry that personally connects to readers.
One chain-smoked cigarettes,
rolled his own
with slow deliberate movements,
never wanted matches,
lit each new smoke
with the butt of the last.
Excerpt from “The Grandparent Poems:
Self-Reflections in a Smoky Mirror” by Michael Castro
“The Grandparent Poems” is a rather lengthy poem (seven pages), an homage to grandparents who died before he was born, and one grandmother who died when he was six years old. The poem, which is best described as a modern sonnet, is based on remembrances and stories informed by a Greek Sephardic tradition and Ladino expression.
One should never think of Michael as one thing: he was many things to many people. He could be a rock star overseas, but he was content in writing, teaching, organizing and creating programs and projects in St. Louis, and spending time with his family.
When Michael passed the St. Louis poet laureate torch to his good friend Shirley, he beamed. It was clear that cancer was taking its toll on his body, but his spirit seemed defiantly filled with joy. Having served as the city’s inaugural poet laureate from 2014 to 2017, it was a fitting transition, both mentally, spiritually and physically. He did what he set out to do, and would continue doing as much as he could the remainder of his life.
Michael Castro passed away on December 23, 2018 after a battle with colon cancer. He was seventy-three. He is survived by his wife Adelia Parker-Castro, son Jomo Castro, stepdaughter Veronica James, stepson Darin Parker, seven grandchildren, and a body of work that consists of over ten books of poetry, recordings, published works, and so much more. While there is no doubt he will always be missed, his body of work will remain with us always.
