The Wasteland – Catherine Hamrick

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

My Other Blog: Random Storyteller

On Writing: The Power of the Exact Word

As a copy chief for a magazine and book division, I edited articles relentlessly—while honoring artful turns of phrase—inspired by Gustave Flaubert, the masterful storyteller who coined the term le mot juste, or “the exact word.” He wrote, “All talent for writing consists, after all, of nothing more than choosing words. It’s precision that gives […]

Coneflower Sequence (the rewrite)

Reconsidering and revising a poem can take you to a new place. Like many this year, I turned to nature for respite and got a new perspective. Here are two versions of the poem. 2020 Last spring, I wanted something trouble-free and found it in coneflower seed packets, buying into the midsummer promise of self-sowing […]

Hiroshima: 75 years after

After blue-white flashes seared the living into shades, after black rain unquenched mouths begging the sky, ginkgo fossils shine in temple gardens, bitter-sweet. In a split second on August 6, 1945, up to 140,000 souls disappeared in the Hiroshima atomic blast. Yet new buds emerged from six ginkgo trees within one mile from the bomb […]