Rosemary Catacalos: On the Life and Work of an American Master

Published in 2025
ISBN: 978-1-7344356-5-8
175 pages

This book, the seventeenth volume in the Unsung Masters Series, brings together a brilliant selection of poems by Rosemary Catacalos, alongside essays, memoirs, appreciations and more by scholars, friends and admirers of the poet. Catacalos, who died in 2022, was the first Latinx Poet Laureate of Texas. Introduction by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Contributors include Michael Anania, Anel I. Flores, Carmen Tafolla, Ire’ne Lara Silva, Reginald Gibbons, Arthur Sze, Anis Shivani, Maha Ahmed, Cary Clack, Betsy Schultz, Bett Butler, Joël Dilley, Graciela Sanchez, Mike Greenberg, and Jim LaVilla-Havelin.

“Densely layered, exquisitely observant, eloquently thoughtful, profoundly humane—no one ever wrote poems like Rose’s. They spring forth so brilliantly textured, so well-paced and intricately woven. This is unbelievably great poetry.” —Naomi Shihab Nye

“In rereading the poems, I’m struck by the rhythmic pulse behind each line. Rosemary Catacalos braids her dual heritage as a Mexican and Greek descendant, and she sifts through daily experience to find the mythic and timeless.” —Arthur Sze

Edited by

Jim LaVilla-Havelin

Jim LaVilla-Havelin is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Mesquites Teach Us to Bend (Lamar University Literary Press, 2025) and The Thoreau Book (Alabrava Press, 2025). Coordinator of National Poetry Month activities in San Antonio for over twenty years, LaVilla-Havelin is the Literary Executor for the estate of Rosemary Catacalos and is currently editing ¡SING!, her unpublished poems.

Maha Ahmed

Maha Ahmed is a writer, editor, and translator. She is a Creative Writing PhD candidate at the University of Houston and a recipient of the 2021 Imprint Nina and Michael Zilkha Fellowship, as well as winner of the 2023 Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry. Her work appears in The Adroit Journal, Grist, The Recluse, and elsewhere.