Musings – Catherine Hamrick

Considering a Communications Career? 10 Questions to Ask Yourself

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change quote by Stephen Hawking via catherinehamrick.com chamrickwriter with image of Milky Way

A student in communications asked the following question: What strategy would you recommend for someone trying to break into the communications industry? Communications is a broad field, so I certainly do not have all the answers. Instead, I suggested thinking through key questions. 1. Does “service” underscore your attitude? Communications […]

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Out of the Wasteland: Spring Unfurling

April arrival-chamrickwriter-pink spring bloom

T.S. Eliot popped into my mind today. After all, April begins. He called it the cruelest month. However, today my thoughts drift to two powerful lines that open Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Drink in the wonder. Change does not always necessitate pain—it can be beautiful. Embrace the season. Whan that Aprille […]

Estimated reading time: 41 seconds

shadow of death on a sidewalk (poem)

i took a turn under a luncheon sun for the unfurling of bearded iris flags, billows of color unwound from pencil-thin buds, petal-splashes of purple, violet, blue, and cream that I floated and then puddled into mud on flimsy pages of watercolor pads— in a class of middling women trying […]

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

Yelling at the Computer Wasted My Breath

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A few days after Santa dropped by, I yelled at my computer. It. Was. Slow. I. Was. Irritated. I argued with a thing. Why? A smart friend told me to get the monkeys off my back and the chatter out of my brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I joined in the […]

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Fear Gags a Poet’s Voice

W. D. Snodgrass collected the Pulitzer Prize for his first book of poems, Heart’s Needle, in 1960. However, with early glory came career pressure, ego issues, loss of relationships, and writer’s block. Nonetheless, he persisted, even when his art fell out of fashion. An interview with the Paris Review offers an intriguing […]

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

My Other Blog: Random Storyteller

The Shadow of My Father’s Beard

It’s the small things, After a person is gone, That keep him alive, For a time, The things unnoticed Until they rise Out of memory’s grave. My father’s beard, Always a shadow, Even at 5 a.m., Briefly bristled my cheek, While my mother Lilted, “Rise and shine,” In the dark Of day number four […]

My Father on D-Day: Why Do You Ask This?

They made movies of our memories,

Of what they thought they were:

German mortar and exploding artillery,

The strewn wreckage

Of flipped, ripped jeeps,

Of wire,

Of bodies, whole, some with faces yet,

Of twitching pieces, arms here and legs flung there,

Of middle parts, spilling guts, oozing.

What was I thinking?

The sea foams, so does blood.

Then my hands did the thinking, and doing, on semi-automatic,

What the doctor ordered:

Stanch bleeding,

Apply dressings,

Sprinkle sulfa powder,

The lone wound antiseptic.

And dwindle the morphine—

On who has the best chance?

The hands became the machine

That patched the broken living and passed them to other hands

That stretchered them up the ramp.

To My Mother: Origami Storm

Although I previously published a version of this poem, I revised it with a certain precision—in keeping with my mom’s handiwork. A science major turned homemaker, she lived joyfully and creatively. I opened cereal boxes upside down And absently stuck them on a fridge shelf, Defying the precision strokes of my mom, The domestic engineer […]