Remembering Stan Astrovsky on The Nightside

Denver and the rest of the world lost a very fierce and compassionate man recently. His poetry was fierce and compassionate, and he had a singular, sardonic, and satirical twinkle in his verse.

In the 90’s Stan began attending the Friday Night open mic poetry readings at the Mercury Café. He began captivating audiences every Friday, frequently stealing the show. He became part of the rotating cast of hosts each Friday, and he hosted and worked the door at many Mercury Café functions. He self-published “Moon of Mercury” and had a new book at the ready to be published as well. He started a poetry salon at RPO Gallery on South Pearl in 2022.

Stan was also an editor of The Mercury Reader, a poetry zine for which he won the James Ryan Morris Memorial Tombstone Award.

He was an on-air host at KUVO from 2002 to 2017 and hosted Jazz On the Edge on Sunday Nights and was one of the original hosts of A Jazz Odyssey. His radio shows were compelling and exciting programs, and he helped install much of the Jazz Odyssey library (often from his own collection). He was a dedicated volunteer at KUVO.

He was a long-time friend of mine and designed the album cover for the third Coyote Poets of the Universe recording “Unmistakable Evidence” and was a very talented collage artist.