July 24, 1988-San Antonio Express-News

Preparing to say adios

There is a bit of nostalgia creeping about in our home as we pack our belongings.

I see San Antonio with eyes quite different from the ones I arrived with five years ago.

The dreams then pirouetted around the idea of creating a cultural bookstore/salon, a space for poetry and art.

The fundamental desire was one of independence as a poet and writer, for the petty politics of funding had become a cliché to me.

I had seen firsthand the effects of government grants, as friends fought over the crumbs for programs that could not be successful because too much time was demanded by burgeoning mountains of paper work and justifications.

There was the hope of surviving principally as a poet, selling books on the side while doing some travel for readings.

Friends in other cities told me I was crazy to trust in a response to poetry.

"No one," I was told adamantly, "will respond to an extended poetry-reading forum!"

Doubts existed

Told that I would soon go through the few poets in the area, I had some doubts as to whether we could create an ongoing "Poets of Tejas Reading" series that could last at least six months before succumbing.

My family never wavered, and my trust in a community paid off as hundreds of different voices took the gallery floor for 56 consecutive readings every third Sunday of the month.

Each of those readings usually involved five to eight readers in the schedule, while the following open-mike segment would bring out a dozen or more people - most reading for the first time in their lives.

It was gratifying and left an indelible impression on my mind. I thank you, San Antonio, for merging your multihued voices and sharing those cantos with us.

As we begin to bid adios to this lovely city of enchantments and polarities, I see so much friendship blossoming among those who love art and who are willing to create it at whatever the cost in personal resources and sacrifices.

At small impromptu gatherings at Tello's home, artists such as Nephtalí de León, Tello, Chista, José Rivera, Jim Valdez and others share their works.

There seems to be no formal setting where they and other artists can meet just to explore dreams while creating images and nuances.

Funding priority

I hear Ramón Vasquez y Sánchez state that "the individual artist must become a definite priority in funding,' and I agree wholeheartedly, for it is the artists who create the works marketed by programs and functionaries.

As important as I feel the arts are, there are also those societal elements that make a greater impact on the person, and those are schools and libraries.

The high incidence of dropouts, the intolerable level of illiteracy and the neglect of our schools and libraries on the part of policymakers are shocking and inexcusable.

There has to be more than mere lip service, for this is a lovely city whose peoples merit a future of dignity and empowerment - and such can come only when we reach out to youth and give them the tools and knowledge to develop a temperament for excellence.

Good schools and excellent libraries can be the nesting places for nurturing minds, for inspiring youth to dream of greatness within their creative capabilities. It is a greatness that is not glittery or suffused in schlock glamour emanating from television and celebrity.

It is all there - and we all know it to be there, deeply embedded within the dreams and hopes of parents who truly want something better for their children.

Many thoughts filter into my mind as I pack, getting ready to go to disprove the adage that one can't go home again.

The feelings are mixed, for you - pueblo of San Antonio in all your languages and pigments - are a canto to me, a poesy of substance and ornamentation, an admixture of promise and pain and I leave to go live within a family fold after more than a dozen years of wandering this nation.

Mount Franklin beckons as does family, and El Paso is taking form again in my thinking as we begin the trek home in about two week. It is akin to a fetal song singing about new visions, burgeoning understandings and the opportunity to create a different kind of poetry.