Evening Watch: 2009

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Hrm

Trying out this Windows Live Writer which is specifically for blog updates. Looks easy enough, but it’s not like doing it the “old-fashioned” way was particularly hard. Not that I’ve been able to really keep up with the blog anyway. Working weird hours takes a lot out of you, and I just feel like a vegetable when I do have time to write.

That said, I am working on a new poem, finally. The first in a long time. Thank God something sparked an idea.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Work

Is exhausting. No new poetry in awhile because I'm just too damn tired after working overnight at Target to do much of anything useful. Haven't submitted anything in awhile either, but I'm going to revisit the haiku I wrote in April with an eye at writing some more and sending them out somewhere.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Another New Poetry Credit

"The very strange thing that occurred to me on my way to work through the pouring rain this morning" has been published at U.M.Ph.! Prose e-zine. Click the link and scroll down.

Full poem reposted after the break too.

Friday, July 31, 2009

New Poetry Credit

Glass: A Journal of Poetry has published my poem "How to Achieve Immortality" in its latest issue.

Full poem after the break, too.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Check out my review of Paul Steven Stone's Book "How To Train A Rock."

Video also posted after the break.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

DungeonLand!

Alright, so the poetry muse has left me currently dry for words. However, a new bug is buzzing in my ear, and that is DungeonLand! I'm in the process of designing a table-top roleplaying/board game for younger kids to help teach reading and basic math. Obviously I have an ulterior motive - that is to help teach my daughter to do those things.

I've been busy with this the last week, have a rough draft of rules currently being critiqued in various places, and have spent, all told, 24+ hours making art for it. Sadly, that accounts for only 5 creatures so far - four of the six basic characters and only one monster. That said, each successive creation takes less time but gets a little more complex, as is to be expected with learning curves. (A contact sheet of the images so far is after the break.)

You can see the rough draft of the rules at RPG.net and DragonAvenue.com. I'd appreciate any of you RPG playing friends taking a look and being honest.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Evening Watch Reviewed by Hugh Fox

This is the kind of reviewing I could only have dreamed of. Pinch me.

Book Review by Hugh Fox

Review reprinted after the break.

Hugh Fox on Cameron Mount's Evening Watch
Evening Watch.
By Cameron Mount
2009; 27pp;Pa; Ibbetson
Street Press, 25 School Street,
Somerville, MA 02143.$10.00.

Review by Hugh Fox

Cameron Mount is Mr. Sea/Seaside. That’s the real center of his whole world-view: “A wall of solid noise is headed my way/visually and aurally moving ashore,// Waves build crescendo as timpani drums/puntuated by strikes and crackles of light/and thunderous cymbal clashes that echo/across the building surf.//Thirty-knot winds tear through sea grass/perched atop protective dunes, whistling like flutes...” (“Surfside Orchesta,” p.22).

He’s refreshingly unpretentious and classroomish, although he does have an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Of course Emerson College specializes in communication, not pretentiousness and that’s what Mount specializes in too, getting it across, so you walk away from his work not turned into a golliwog of confusion, but a satisfied partcipant in the variations of Mount’s sea-visions. Not that he’s Mr. Super-Simplicity either, but has just enough artfulness to smack it to you effectively: “The cyan sky houses/a yellow sun and cotton clouds/as it arches over azure seas/and the foam-flecked northeast wind.//Zephyrs carry sea gulls, terns,/turk’s heads hung from mast heads...” (“Evening Watch in the North Atlantic,” p.3).

His six years in the Navy didn’t hurt either, and although he’s very New England centered, a member of the Bagel Bards, Somerville’s top-drawer poets-getting-together society, there’s a lot of historical-international geographical overseeing in his work too: “moss growing in the sidewalk cracks of Istanbul/counterfeit Malese casino dollars/tracer rounds bouncing off the Sargasso Sea...Diamond Botanical Gardens on the island of St. Lucia/Sonoma cacti in the American desert Southwest/wild bamboo in a village near Shanghai.” (“Green,” p. 20).

A fascinating combination of Mr. New Englander and World Viewer, but no matter where in the world he goes, he’s always sea-oriented, the ancient past, the present moment, whatever future may come along, it’s always refreshingly sea-centered: “Heralds of the western Med,/they greet us at the Gibraltar gates/the Pillars of Hercules, harbingers/of our approaching task......” (“Flying Fish,” p. 10).

***** Hugh Fox was the founder and Board of Directors member of COSMEP, the International Organization of Independent Publishers, from 1968 until its death in 1996. Editor of Ghost Dance: The International Quarterly of Experimental Poetry from 1968-1995. Latin American editor of Western World Review & North American Review, during the 60's. Former contributing reviewer on Smith/ Pulpsmith, Choice etc. currently contributing reviewer to SPR and SMR. Listed in Who's Who: The Two Thousand Most Important Writers in the Last Millenium, Dictionary of Middlewestern Writers, and The International Who's Who. He has 85 books published and has another 30 (mainly the novels and plays and one archaeology book) still unpublished on the shelves.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Cameron Mount's Reading— From "Evening Watch"

For those of you who couldn't be present at the reading, here's me reading two of the six poems I read.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

First Review of Evening Watch by Irene Koronas

The first review of my book is up at the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene and it's a good one!

Review posted after the break.

Evening Watch
Cameron Mount
Ibbetson Street Press
2009 $10.00

To order:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/evening-watch/7182268

“By day I repel all boarders.
My front door peephole is
now a full-fledged porthole.

Staring out into the past
of everyday actions and reflecting
six years of service back.”

Usually I read from the beginning to the end of a book, but, for this book of poems I read the first poem and then the last poem, “dry dock sailor,” before I attempt all the rest of the writing. It’s important for me to understand, or to try to relate to the ship, in this case the poems as they move straight through whatever obstacle the ship stirs its way through, in this case the poems stir up all the experiences one has when on duty. The ebb and flow, the relationship of words crashing onto my mind, my feet are swept up and I fall, swimming to shore with the surety of a life jacket. Cameron Mount is a poet who will take any subject and refine it, direct the verse until it shines, “From the darkened bruise of the star-strewn moon-lit pitch to the eclipsed light of dawn.”

If you haven’t bought this book of poems, I suggest you run and catch a copy.

“Navy Wife

He came home broken.
He avoids me at night
leaves me alone on the couch
loses himself in empty drivel
turns on, tunes in, drops out.
Internet.
He thinks I don’t notice
when he surfs for porn-
his compulsions get him over,
off, as if I have no ears,
but it saves me his advances
later when he comes to bed
after midnight, spent.
He spends all day in that chair
when he can, when he shouldn’t.”

Irene Koronas
poetry editor

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

New Published Poem

It's online at U.M.Ph.! Prose. It's called "In the Interest of Saving Time Tonight, I" and is about 3/4 of the way down the page.

It's also reposted after the break.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Another Taste of My Chapbook - in Audio

Eden-A Brothel Near Gdynia. Trying something a little different here--using Facebook video this time.

I recorded these using my desktop microphone and Audacity. That was the basic MP3 creation. For the video, I just used Windows Movie Maker and layered the picture of the cover over the MP3. Pretty simple actually.

Audio of Evening Watch

If anyone has purchased my chapbook and would like to have audio of me reading the poems, I have MP3 files of each poem available. Please contact me for more information.

Below is "Evening Watch in the North Atlantic" just as a bit of a teaser.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Sun, Night, Evening - an erasure poem

I was turned on to erasure poems about 5 years ago and every once in awhile I turn back to them. This one was written in December and then promptly forgotten. But I found it again, and I like it.

Poem after the break.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Advertising

I bought web adspace for Evening Watch at Facebook. I probably didn't offer enough money up for the budgeting, but the general idea seems to be working. I wish it had a better click-through-rate, but considering what the ad is, what the space allows, and what I've budgeted, it is maxing out the budget each day this past week so far. I just wish I had access to see how many copies were actually being sold.

I may buy another ad on Google AdWords, but first I want to see a hard copy, which should be next week.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

New Published Poem

Wilderness House Literary Review has posted their new issue! You can check out my poem "Eden--A Brothel Near Gdynia" at this link.* I encourage you to check out the whole issue at www.whlreview.com

*Direct PDF link

Full poem after the break.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Review--Highlander: the Source

AAAAAGGHH! Urgh, ugh, ugga, aack, eraaack, aaataa.*

*the sounds my brain made as it tried to strangle itself.

Rest of the post after the break.

The movie is STUPID.

Now that that is out of my system, I can continue. I am a huge Highlander fan. I have been since roughly 1992 when I saw the first Highlander movie on tv as a precursor to the then new tv series. I saw the abominations that were II and III, and began to think of Duncan from the tv show as the only real Highlander. Now, after having suffered through both Endgame and the Source, I am re-evaluating my entire thought process.

I watched just about every episode when they aired or shortly thereafter. When the SciFi channel had them in rerun slots in the early 2000s, I used to watch them then too. My best friend and I had copies of Queen's It's a Kind of Magic and used to listen to "Princes of the Universe" while driving not long after we got our licenses. I had a Highlander poster and desperately wanted a repro-claymore and a dragon-headed katana. I own 3 of the seasons on DVD and am trying to collect the rest. I own all the movies (except the Source). I say all of this to highlight how much of a fanboy I was. I was so bad, in fact, I even made excuses for horrible plot holes and tried to rationalize everything stupid that has ever been done in the name of Highlander, including the spin-off tv shows.

So, when I tell you to think back to my recent review of Hawk the Slayer, and to consider what I wrote about Hawk being the singular worst movie I've ever seen, and then tell you, right now, that Highlander: the Source has promoted Hawk the Slayer to only the second worst movie I've ever watched, you'll have an idea of just how much I detested this loathsome film. There is nothing, and I will repeat that, nothing redeemable about this movie. The fact that the principle cast from the tv show would even remotely consider wanting to be associated with this mountain of rotted human sewage has lowered their esteem in my eyes to that of a bilge rat. I can't even bring myself to describe the asinine "plot" because the ideas are so atrocious that they make the idea that Immortals are aliens or time-travel agents (from II, and II--the Renegade Edition, respectively) seem completely sane and rational. If the Mythbusters were to do a comparison of plot-lines within the variant source material over the years, they would prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the idea of alien Immortals is not just plausible, but confirmed, all just to avoid even attempting to scientifically examine this crap.

If you have even one iota, one speck, one single modicum of support of the Highlander brand, or even if you have seen it and don't care either way, PLEASE don't watch this piece of intestinal muck. I'm not kidding when I say that the brand has been so tainted in my head as to make Jar-Jar Binks' effect on Star Wars seem like the most trivial nonsense. Han shooting first doesn't make me hate Lucas anywhere near as much as the Source makes me despise everything about the entire Highlander universe.

Have I made myself clear?

/rant

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Abandoned Chair

The Somerville News has my poem "Abandoned Chair" in the April 1st issue.

Poem after the break.

Monday, March 30, 2009

New Posted Poem

I'm a huge fan of the great haiku poet Matsuo Bashō, but I really don't like the average modern translations, including the one by Robert Hass, a poet whose original work I really like. The slavish adherence to the 5-7-5 syllabic constraints from the Japanese actually harm my enjoyment of most haiku. I do, however, happen to have what I consider to be the best translation available. It's titled Classic Haiku: An Anthology of Poems by Basho and His Followers and was translated by Asataro Miyamori. I didn't seek out this translation and wasn't made aware of it in any classes or workshops. Rather, by happenstance I picked up the last copy of the book at a small bookstore on the Ocean City, New Jersey boardwalk.

Miyamori's introduction, which takes almost a quarter of the book, goes into detail about his feelings regarding interpretive translations, but suffice to say he doesn't like them. The majority of the poems in this book are two lines long and direct translations (or as near as possible considering the lack of articles and pronouns in the original Japanese). One last selling point of this particular book is that he also includes alternate translations from other sources, the original kanji lettering, and the transliterated Japanese (that is, Japanese sound sense using English letters).

Poem after the break.

Because of my exposure to Miyamori's translation, the first six lines of my poem were written in the same manner and at different times capturing different images. The first tercet is a true haiku of the 5-7-5 species, and the second is an inverted haiku--that is 7-5-7.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Poem Samples

Based on the recommendation of Paul Steven Stone, a fellow Bagel Bard and author of the book Or So It Seems, I'll be posting up a few poems here. The poems you'll read here will be excellent examples of my styles and topics. The first one is posted below. If you like it, please download and distribute it to your friends. Feedback is also appreciated.

Poem after the break.

Epiphany

Publish at Scribd

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

New review

I'm working on my review of Book of Beasts, a poetry collection of creatures set up much like the bestiaries of Dungeons and Dragons and ancient texts written by notables like Pliny and Herodotus. The collection contains 2 poems for each letter of the alphabet, each letter being assigned to a different creature. But the poems aren't about the creatures themselves, or are least only tangential to the beasts. That's not to say it's good or bad, but I'm having a tough time deciding whether I like the collection or not. It stands together well, and some of the poems are decent, but--I don't know. Something just feels--off.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Three more rejected poems

This time Blood Lotus has rejected them - "Engage," "Jealousy" and "Moving Loss."

Monday, March 9, 2009

More Rejections

More poetry rejections from Burnside Review. Three poems - "Bounty from the Sea," "Surfside Orchestra," and "Night."

Friday, March 6, 2009

Poetry Book Review - Falling Forward by Rebecca Schumejda

Link to Original publication

Falling Forward by Rebecca Schumejda
Copyright 2008
sunnyoutside
PO Box 911
Buffalo, NY 14207
ISBN: 978-1-935613-12-5

Rebecca Schumejda’s titular poem is also the last one in the collection, set off by its own section heading and center justified. It’s a special poem that acts as a sort of afterword and comments, in a fairly direct manner, on the collection as a whole. The image one gets is of a prayer, but not just any prayer—a prayer of supplication in the face of adversity.

More after the break
Indeed, the collection as a whole works on that level. The section titles are all lines or images from the title poem, “The Truth Is Too Heavy,” “Folded Like Two Hands in Prayer,” “Overgrown with Weeds and Regrets,” and “Falling Forward.”

The first poem begins “This afternoon / I buried your cat / while you were at work.” It is economical language broken into clauses, but the enjambed first line lends a sense of tension, which is borne out through the rest of the poem. The narrator dreads the idea of relating this event when her significant other returns home from a day at work.

Other poems follow a similar theme—two characters with distance between them, avoiding topics that need to be addressed and fumbling through crumbling or crumbled relationships, all in an attempt to maintain grip on the ungrippable.

This tension between the things that ought to be said and things that are not said creates a space of broken relationships and cross-purpose discussions. It’s similar to a Pinter play in that the space between spoken thoughts is as much a character as the actual characters within the poems.

Ultimately, the reader is left with the last poem as an answer to all the problems within. “Falling Forward” is an apt description of the lives of Schumejda’s characters. They don’t so much move through time as stumble, trying to keep their feet in an uneven world. But “[w]hen the truth is too heavy…[t]here’s no way to avoid failure,” says the narrator. This is the very essence, the underlying motif of each poem, that the only thing you can do is “just lean forward / let your knees cushion your fall.”

Very much recommended.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

The Adventures of Roger Ray, Relic Hunter

So my novel in the works just got a retitle, and an extra 1000 words last night after someone asked me about it. I sent what I had off to the person asking because they said something about publication possibilities, but that's as likely as a zombie crashing through my window to eat my brains.

Anyway, I'm back working at the book, at least for a bit. I'm going to aim for 500 words a day and see if I can't maintain it until I get to about 80,000. Only 71,000 left to get there, so maybe by the end of summer?

Second note - the Bagel Bards have opened the call for submissions to Bagels with the Bards #4 and I sent them "The Day I Met Eddie Murphy."

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Philip Jose Farmer Passed Away

From Farmer's homepage--

February 25th:

Philip José Farmer passed away peacefully in his sleep this morning.

He will be missed greatly by his wife Bette, his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, friends and countless fans around the world.

January 26, 1918 - February 25, 2009. R.I.P.

We love you Phil.

I'm not sure how many people have read any of Farmer's books, but they were a tremendous influence in my reading/writing life. A newly budding fascination with pulp fiction of the 1920s and 30s was jump started by reading the Heinlein novel The Number of the Beast. After devouring all of the Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars stories, I was grasping for more pulp. It simply didn't exist in the late 1990s (it has since seen a fairly major return with collections like Adventure! and McSweeney's Action Stories), but I stumbled across mentions of this thing called Wold Newton, a concept that Farmer created to link pulp heroes across writers and generations. It ties figures like James Bond to Tarzan to Superman, etc, and spans great heroes of action stories from dozens of authors over the years.

With a renewed passion, I gorged myself on all things Wold Newton, reading all the old novels that Farmer referenced, including Doc Savage, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and many many others. When that was done, I stepped into Farmer's Riverworld series (please, please, please don't watch the made-for-Scifi Channel movie and draw conclusions), which blew me away.

When I started to write fiction, I initially tried fantasy, as I think most of us who play RPGs do at some time or another. But after a confluence of ideas (including Riverworld, Indiana Jones, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Firefly, Robert E. Howard, and a few others I'm drawing blanks on now) rattled in my brain, I started to work on a story. It's shaping up so far (~30 pages) a novel or maybe a novella, but it's more natural and easier for me to inhabit (in writing) than elves and dragons.

He hadn't written anything new in quite awhile, but his passing has definitely saddened me. I just thought I'd share.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

My first publication

I just heard back from Wilderness House Literary Review. Eden--A Brothel Near Gdynia was accepted for publication! I'll post again when it's posted online.

Woo-hoo!

Friday, February 6, 2009

And another rejection

This time from Boxcar Poetry Review.

Four poems--
Answers to Common Questions
Epiphany
Navy Wife
Questions at a Funeral

Off to find a new venue.

I resubmitted Epiphany, and added Evening Watch and Flying Fish, to Ploughshares.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Today

I had an idea for a poem last night when I got home at 11:00, but foolishly decided sleep was more important. As a punishment (I guess), I didn't get called in to work today, so now I'm stuck at home. At least I have a "Lie to Me" and some Doctor Who to keep me company.

Maybe the thread that engaged the poetry muscle will reappear so that this time I can capture whatever it was.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Wilderness House

I sent in the two poems Poetry rejected to the Wilderness House Literary Review. The editor/publisher and poetry editor are people I met on Saturday and hope to establish a rapport with over the next few months. The group is called The Bagel Bards and includes Doug Holder, Steve Glines, and Pushcart Winner Afaa Weaver, who I spent an hour talking to about military service, his history in publishing, and the future of publishing in general.

Another Rejection

Rejections-
Poetry - Eden, Kiel Day

This bums me out because these are two of my favorites. However, it was from Poetry magazine, so it's not as disheartening as one would think. The fast response (<1 month) indicates they didn't even read it. Now to find another place to submit.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

MFA - Now what?

Rejections-
AGNI - The Day I Met Eddie Murphy

Submissions-
Glass Poetry - How to Achieve Immortality, Memories of a Late Vermont Winter
Blood Lotus - Engage, Jealousy, Moving Loss
Poetry - Eden, Kiel Day
Boston Review - The Day I Met Eddie Murphy
AGNI - The Very Strange Thing
Boxcar - Navy Wife, Epiphany, Questions at a Funeral, Answers to Common Questions
Burnside - Night, Surfside Orchestra, Bounty
42opus - Night Watch