River Styx: Liberating the Spoken Word
A new, active literary scene began in the late 1960s in St. Louis, with young poets and musicians casually gathering to perform their own work and others’. Reflecting on this music scene, Michael Castro, Jan Garden Castro, and others began the River Styx Poets radio show on listener‐supported KDNA‐FM, which ran from 1969‐72.
In 1975, the Castros co-founded River Styx magazine and began producing regular public poetry readings at local restaurant Duff’s in the Central West End. Duff’s hosted these events until it closed in 2014.
The magazine and poetry series pioneered a multicultural, community‐based approach to literature that was new in the 1970s to St. Louis and much of the country. Prominent poets and writers from the region were among those featured, along with renowned poets from across the world.
WashU Libraries hold three important archives that directly document these activities. Those archives are the River Styx Archive, the Jan Garden Castro Papers, and the Michael Castro Papers. Together, these collections contain 947 audio recordings of literary readings, musical performances, and artist interviews.
The River Styx: Liberating the Spoken Word exhibition was digitized with the Access to Historical Records grant from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission (NHPRC).
The grant money allowed digitization of all the cassette and reel-to-reel tapes in these three collections. Through this exhibition, WashU provides complete access to recorded performances by hundreds of poets and other writers who appeared in St. Louis from 1969‐2008.
A selection of digitized recordings is available to listen to online via the River Styx Collection portal. These are mainly the River Styx at Duff’s performances.
Also available are over 3,000 digital images of brochures, announcements, correspondence, schedules, flyers, press releases, clippings, and other supporting documentation from the aforementioned collections and the Duff’s Restaurant Literary Events Collection.