CAIRN: Poetry and Essays by Cameron Miller
Readers looking for an engaging and spiritual journey will find comfort in Cameron Miller's words in his latest book CAIRN: POEMS AND ESSAYS. After decades of reading and ogling poetry, Miller made room among the novels, newspaper columns, and preaching to hone poems amidst the wild beauty of northernmost Vermont and the pastoral beauty of the Finger Lakes. The elements of nature are this poet’s paint but he also paddles a gondola through the dark channels of the mind while lighting the way.
The words themselves are cairns guiding readers on an inward journey. Both poems and essays work on the reader from two directions, the brain down and the ground up. Poems like “I want to be Mary Oliver” seem whimsical at first but quickly instigate a new look at an old subject. Poems that immediately jump into deep water like “Depression,” offer a sense of liberation via blunt and unvarnished authenticity.
Cairn speaks from these two hemispheres of the human experience in a way that aids those who start out with discomfort around poetry. It quickly demonstrates that poetry need not be a strange or inaccessible medium after all.
Details:
Genre: Poetry and Essay
ISBN:978-1-950730-46-9
Release: July 22,2020
A Reading from CAIRN
Reviews
Cairn opens ways into these experiences that access a fuller, more sacred awareness, a universal connection - for which many of us cannot find the words - between soul and soul, soul and nature, soul and God.
Amid such depth, I also find poems that have me grinning, essays possessed of insights wise and wry. And I'm especially enchanted by the winter images of "tiny ghost horses" spinning off snow dunes, the "...stippled light, piercing cold...the voice of winter's night."
What more could a reader want than these poems that linger past the page, hover like an exhaled breath on a frozen night?
Ricki Mandeville, Author of “A Thin Strand of Lights”
Cameron Miller has managed to describe the exquisitely subtle and seemingly indescribable illusive nature of our lives. The powerful and enchanting images in his poems remain shimmering in the mind long after the poem has been read.
Appearing early in the book is “Chromosome Reach” where his four-day-old baby appears sleeping as it nestles against him. Descriptions of the author's response to the infant are powerful, moving, and profound.
Nature is described in the beautiful poem, “Framing Stick Season,” where hopefulness makes its appearance. There are moments when Cameron Miller's words sometimes lead to a world of darkness yet his brilliant descriptions, metaphors, and similes often make it possible for the reader to travel with him through the darkness and find great comfort and wisdom.
Diane Stockwell, a review left on Amazon
Those who have found cairns while hiking appreciate that small kindly gift and mark of other like minded travelers, a kind of pay-it-forward in nature. Cairn is pay-it-forward poetry in that it expresses what we all go through, are going through, and will go through in the stuff that awaits. Cairn is good medicine especially now as things.are.just.weird. The poems and essays by Cameron Miller invite you in and you wonder where they will take you as you enjoy the meditative cadence or wry humor or the surprising alacrity of reality with honesty. I laughed outloud at "I Want to be Mary Oliver". This collection has been my daily good medicine for observing, quieting, chuckling, smiling, recalling, pondering, misty-eye making moments of life. As Lucille Clifton said, "Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language." Get this now.
Deanne Plonka, a review left on Amazon
Cameron Miller's latest book " Cairn: Marking the Trace" is a book to read and reread! I felt myself stepping into a place of peacefulness with moments for quiet reflection. The poem "Eleven Below in Vermont" paints a view of the natural world in a heightened way through a slower pace and acute listening.
Miller's poems and essays are moving and thought provoking. The essay "Rime Ice Around the Heart" speaks to a range of emotions, including grief and anger, facing these emotions and working through them. His simple statement "The only way out is through" is a wise prescription.
Bob, a review left on Amazon