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.

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.

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

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.

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.