Cantos to Blood & Honey

Articulating the rhythm and flavor of an Afro-Caribbean–US search for a cohesive identity.

A rhythmic debut poetry collection powered by the pulse of the Caribbean, Cantos to Blood & Honey presents a synthesis of Afro-Caribbean, Hispanic, and North American mythology, language, and aesthetics. Adrian Castro, an Afro-Latino performance poet, explores within this dance issues of migration, cultural community, memory, and history.

Articulating the search for a cohesive Afro-Caribbean–American identity, Castro honors myth on one hand and history on the other. He addresses the migratory experience from Africa to the Caribbean to North America and the eventual clash of cultures. Meanwhile, a section of prose poems deals with ancestors past and present.

Writing in the Afro-Caribbean tradition pioneered by Nicolas Guillén and Luis Pales Matos, Castro creates a circular motion of theme, tone, subject matter, style, and cultural history, giving rise to a new illuminating archetypal poetry.

Publication date: September 1, 1997

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 6 x 9

Page count: 160 pages

ISBN: 9781566890670

A Cuban-Dominican poet and Ifa priest from Miami, Adrian Castro writes as if “Chano Pozo were hitting the keys of a typewriter instead of the skin of a drum.” He has performed at the Nuyorican Poets’ Café in New York, Naropa Institute in Boulder, The Hemingway Literary Festival in Chicago, and The Miami Book Fair International. He is the author of Cantos to Blood & Honey, Wise Fish, and most recently, Handling Destiny.

“Cantos to Blood & Honey is a celebration—a celebration of a lively, original, and mesmerizing new voice who is destined to burn a path through the contemporary American poetry scene. If we read and listen, we will be taken over by this fine poet in a knockout and lasting debut.”

—Virgil Suarez, author of Spared Angola

“Castro has long been layering Spanish, English, and Yoruba dialects, musical sound, and drum rhythms, Cuba, Miami, Africa, and the Santeria religion. . . . He seems well on his way to inventing a brand new Miami pathos.”

—The Miami Herald