Poet’s voice will live on in the world she loved

On Christmas Day 2019, shortly after I’d returned to the Express-News, I received a text from Rosemary Catacalos.

“Beloved hermanito,” she wrote. “I write with the greatest good wishes for you and yours in celebration of the Christmas season. Apologies for going silent a while, but I have been bound and determined not to distract you even slightly from your first week and column. I have been ill since Dec. 11. A new cancer treatment and I do not get along.”

She concluded, “PLEASE don’t allow this news to get in the way of your work!”

She’d sketched the character of a great friend, mentor and poet, one so selfless that she felt the need to apologize for being silent because she was being treated for cancer.

Rose, the first Latina to be named Texas poet laureate, died June 17 after living with cancer for more than seven years. She was 78.

Death never silences a poet’s voice, not after it’s been spoken and heard, never after it’s been written and read, and few voices resonated like that of Rosemary Catacalos, one of the best poets this city and state has produced.

“I cannot bear the thought that her indelible voice won’t be coming over the telephone anymore,” poet Naomi Shihab Nye, her friend of 51 years, said. “She made so many melodic sounds or intonations as parts of regular conversations — the ‘huh’ and ‘meh’ and ‘uh-huh’ type.”

Little more than a week before her death, two of Rose’s close friends, Betsy Schultz and

Bett Butler, set up a page for friends to receive updates and send messages. Butler, a magnificent jazz singer, wrote of Rose’s “use of tempo, space, and breath; the judicious seasoning of Texas drawl or a Spanish phrase beautifully rendered.”

It was a magnificent voice, one that initially confused me.

I first met Rose in 2003 shortly after she became executive director of Gemini Ink, the literary arts center. I knew she was of Greek and Mexican heritage and grew up speaking Spanish, Greek and English, and I heard in her voice what Naomi and Bett heard. But I also heard the voice of a Black woman.

It all made sense when I learned Rose grew up on the East Side and had imbibed the idiom of the Black community in which she lived as deeply as she’d absorbed the rhythms and nuances of the languages spoken in her household.

Her poem “Swallow Wings” begins with the lines, “I been to church, folks.

I’m an East Side Meskin Greek and I been to church.” The poem is dedicated to Maya Angelou, who encouraged her to speak in all her languages.

Through the years, Rose and I would talk about our experiences of growing up on the East Side, and the blessings of being the oldest grandchild and living with or near grandparents.

“She was elegant,” Nye said. “Her voice in every language was gorgeously resonant. She was always wise. Beyond all of us somehow.”

On Mother’s Day, Rose called to tell me the cancer had spread. “I’m going to begin …, ” there was a slight pause, “transitioning.”

She apologized for making my day heavy — again with the apology — but I told her I was fine because I could feel she was at peace.

Then, she said, “I love this world. I love this world so much, despite all of its problems.”

In 2013, at the memorial service of her former father-in-law, Bill Sinkin, the visionary businessman and advocate for social justice, Rose read her poem “Mr. Chairman Takes His Leave.” It’s a tribute to Sinkin, his faith in democracy and devotion to making its promise true for all:

“You have left it to us, messy and imperfect

as we are and will be, to keep to the work side by side

and as long as it takes, all the while singing of miracles

just as Whitman and you taught us to do.”

It’s a song of hope.

Rose, you’ve taken leave of this world you loved, despite Ukraine, Uvalde and the unrest of insurrection. We must find the miracles we can sing. We must keep to the work, side by side.

Catacalos