BOOK REVIEW Poetry collection encourages the reader to slow down and notice the world

C.T. Salazar

Special to the Mississippi Clarion Ledger

In 'The Tears of Things,' poet Catherine Hamrick provides a vivid proof of the world. Akin to the poet Carl Phillips, who said that poem isn’t a map, but a record of having been lost, Hamrick’s speaker is interested in the experience of noticing the world in front of her rather than imagining a destination elsewhere.

The poet’s gift of attention makes even the small images in a poem relishable to readers, as in the collection’s opening poem 'Iowa Dreams' where Hamrick captures moments easy to miss and elevates them to instances of beauty: 'where needle-thin bird tracks ghosted– / a temple bell chimed copper prayers.'

The subtle shifts in the line 'a temple bell chimed copper prayers' working through the vowels up and back down the alphabet almost in perfect sequence adds a musicality reinforcing the image itself. Hamrick’s lines are just as memorable for their out-loud quality as they are for the image the lines articulate.

Catherine Hamrick started her career in print, working at 'Southern Living,' 'Cooking Light,' 'Southern Accents,' 'Victoria,' 'Better Homes and Gardens' and Meredith Books. She taught writing and communication arts at several colleges and universities before jumping into digital marketing as a copywriter and content strategist.

The poems in 'The Tears of Things' are ordered by the seasons, starting with winter. This informs the reader’s participation — to know the time while the speaker maps the space.

Many of the poems carry that sense of season embodied within their images. Take 'Summer Contained' where Hamrick writes, 'clouds press morning air, / squeezing the sweet odor of a storm / heavy with August plant oils and earth.' More than just visually, Hamrick’s poems speak to all the senses and taking the world becomes an act of sense-making.

One of the bright spots throughout the collection is the presence of the speaker’s family. In the opening poem, the father appears for a moment was he 'staked bean poles / in crooked clay rows and bent to plant Kentucky Wonders,' but his and the mother’s presence both grow as the poems progress. Hamrick pays close attention to even the way the backdrop remembers their routine lives: 'Fifty-plus years wore down the familiar: / the dent of my father’s head in the sofa pillow, / thread snagged and loosened on my mother’s easy chair.'

In separate instances across poems, the father’s binoculars are within reach of the poet as in the poem 'Birdwatch.' Moments like these highlight both the limits and limitless nature of our strongest bonds and ability to be held by those who love us most.

Despite being ordered by seasons, there’s a fifth section of 'The Tears of Things,' aptly titled 'The Fifth Season.' The five poems that make this section and conclude the collection are more interested in time and our place in a larger order of understanding. These poems are deeply vulnerable, meditating on the 'voyage toward a far country' in which 'the passport photo that may be / my last, the joke we are finally our parents’ age.' Here the poet ends at a beginning, beautifully with a poem titled 'At Sunrise: Metta Meditation' by offering a blessing: 'may you be peaceful, / may you be well, / may you know emerald springs / and ruby-throated joy.'

Many lines will stick with the reader long after closing the collection, but the feat that makes Hamrick a great poet is the task she gives readers: to pay attention to the world as we’re living in it.

C.T. Salazar ’s debut poetry collection, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking (Acre Books 2022) was named a 2023 finalist for the Theodore Roethke Memorial Award. C.T. is an assistant professor at Delta State University where he directs the university archives and museums.