Arts Alive San Antonio

BY JASMINA WELLIGHOFF, Editor

When I interviewed Rosemary Catacalos some years ago when she was the executive director of Gemini Ink, one thing repeatedly came up in the conversation: her concern for the community. In that article I wrote: “Whether she is talking about personal memories or the goals of the literary center she’s led for the past four years, her love for San Antonio shines through. This is her home, she says, the place where her dead are buried. And this is the city she wants to serve.”

Today, we can only thank her for her service and all she’s given to San Antonio, now that she joined “her dead” on Friday, June 17, 2022.

“She put San Antonio on the map as a literary destination,” said her friend and former employee, Bett Butler, a well-known jazz singer and musician. “Rose had the contacts and the credibility to bring in writers like Margaret Atwood, Peter Matthiessen, Grace Paley, Caroline Kennedy, LI-Young Lee, and others. And she put a lot more emphasis on bringing writers into the community to work with students and traumatized/at-risk populations… From her own experience she knew the healing power of creative writing – that it could be a lifesaver for some.”

Years ago, Catacalos said to me: “What I want to do is build literacy and community. Literature is not an art for those who sit and ponder on the mountaintop. It’s really about human stories – communities and stories.”

Of mixed Greek and Mexican heritage, Catacalos was drawn to cultural interfaces that are part of contemporary American life. She was proud of Gemini Ink’s program, Writers in Communities, an initiative that sent writers into a range of places – mostly involving young people – to encourage self-expression and the sharing of stories. In fact, she reoriented the purpose of Gemini Ink itself, from an organization serving primarily writers to an agency reaching out to many groups.

Earlier in life, she did leave San Antonio in 1989 to immerse herself in poetry at Stanford University thanks to a two-year fellowship she received. “Those were two glorious years,” she told me. “Denise Leverton was our mentor. There were 12 of us in the poetry program, and our only fixed obligation was to meet once a week to critique each other’s work. I got a good number of poems done.”

Altogether, she ended up spending 15 years in the Bay Area, where she later became the executive director of the Poetry Center/American Poetry Archives at San Francisco State University for six years.

Though she spent years in arts administration, including a stint at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, she was also a first rate-poet, who became the Texas Poet Laureate in 2013 on the strength of her first full poetry collection, “Again, for the First Time.”  Over the years her poems appeared in nationally prominent journals and anthologies, earning her a nation-wide reputation. “Again, for the First Time” received the Texas Institute of Letters Poetry Prize in 1985, and was reissued in 2013 on its 30^th anniversary.

She’s left behind another poetry collection, “Sing!,” which is now in the hands of her friend and prominent literary figure in San Antonio, Jim LaVilla-Havelin, long-time poetry editor for the Express-News. He will edit and organize the material and eventually look for a publisher.

“Her work is unlike anybody else’s, totally singular,” said LaVilla-Havelin. “Weaving her history, her love of language, the music of words – she belongs among the great poets. I read three of her poems last night, and was struck, like I always am with her work, struck by the amazing reach of the work and its music and specificity. She is on YouTube reading her own poems, which is great because her voice was so gorgeous. She was a dear friend. I am still processing this loss. It’s very hard.”

LaVilla-Havelin said that he and poet Naomi Nye are in the process of planning a commemorative reading for all the poets the literary community has lost this past year, including Robert Bonazzi, Tom Keene, and, of course, Rose, as everyone one called her. The event will probably take place closer to the Day of the Dead in early November.

Undoubtedly, there will be laughter as well as tears among the attendees. Friends remember Catacalos as “feisty” and “funny.”

“What I personally liked about her was her wicked sense of humor,” said Butler, “But also her love of music and musicians, especially jazz. And her honesty. If I ran a piece of work by her, she would give me a brutal critique. I welcomed that; that’s how you get better.”

Catacalos was first diagnosed with cancer seven years ago. In the final stages of her illness, she was under hospice care but still enjoyed hearing from friends through a CaringBridge page that Butler and another close friend, Betsy Schultz, set up for friends to post messages. Those were read to her every day.

“She accepted what was coming,” said Butler. “I am sure there must have been terrifying moments, but when she called to tell me of that final diagnosis, she was calm, and her sense of humor was intact. She wanted to discuss plans for the memorial service. ‘You know me,’ she laughed. ‘I am always programming.’”