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

Blue Ridge Autumn

Last weekend, as fall slipped away, I paused. Where had the color gone? Everyday noise, as well as high winds and heavy rains in late October and early November, had blinded me to the season’s leaf watch. I revisited a poem posted two years ago: “Fall Leavings.” The title seemed to skimp on the details […]

2020 Birdwatch (nature heals in an unlikely year)

Everything came sooner this year— ‘February Gold’ daffodils frilling the neighbor’s yard, marching in patches, like bonneted Dutch dolls patterning the quilts hand-stitched by my grandmother in the halo of a Depression glass kerosene lamp; the ground thaw of the full worm supermoon, with the mounding of earthworm droppings crushed under my boot weeks before […]

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 […]