When Kerosene's Involved
Mojave River Press, 2014
Daniel Romo was born to write prose poems. Like his contemporaries, Gary Copeland Lilley and John Olivares Espinoza, Romo combines the form’s trademark surrealism with a reporter’s eye, a comic’s timing, and a jazz singer’s phrasing. Indeed, the language and rhythm of jokes and riffing is all over this collection. (“I come from a long line of Liars. Don’t believe that.”) Punch lines, routines, bad puns. Have you heard the one…? But not just one-liners—though he has some fantastic one-liners—but sick jokes, shaggy dog stories, strange asides, gimmicks, cruel jokes, verbal pranks.
There’s a lot of talking going on in this collection. (“I say, rain. You say, pyro. I say, Spain. You say, Cairo. I say, The Mexican-American War was actually started over a woman. You say, Tell me more.”) These poems are funny, irreverent; at times angry, sad, prodding, tender; sometimes experimental, always deadly serious. Romo’s speaker talks a blue streak, confessing, telling tales, surmising and cracking wise. And when you least expect it, he turns and grabs you by the shoulders and lets you know exactly how he’s feeling: “How the apostles were able to show restraint and allegiance in the face of blasphemy is something I have yet to learn.” — Sebastian Matthews
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Praise:
The prose poems in Daniel Romo's debut collection read like trees and trees of scorched photographs: hot, fragmented, and alive like leaves. Walking through this strange forest is the poet on fire asking, "What if there is no heaven?" Asking, "Why?" Asking for prayer, and surrender, and the faces in the ash to come back all at once. These poems shake like a world up in smoke, and mourning for beauty. — Sabrina Orah Mark
Daniel Romo knows the intrinsic mutability of all things—and especially those things that go bump in a poem. Whether asking me out on a date or setting fire to all of the available niceties, he’s the prose poemist with the mostest, the fabulous and daring new voice of an old soul. — Alan Michael Parker
Like Berryman’s Henry, the first person is always shape-shifting, inflating himself into action heroes or sputtering out into awkward punchlines. Who is this shape-shifter, this morbid jokester? The identity of this speaker is unidentifiable—a drifter, descendant of immigrants, a consumer of pop culture, emptied. — Cathy Park Hong
Daniel Romo's debut collection of prose poems comes at you―a spontaneous combustion. Each poem a blaze, an inferno, registering its signature impression. A necessary and unique voice in contemporary poetry... his language is fresh and at times surprising, but always memorable into a cohesive modern collection. If there was ever a debut collection leaving its trademark; this is it! — Thrush Poetry Journal
These are movements of small and epic scales compressed into this basic space of a page. These poems are the act of retching. Supremely precise, Romo takes his small spaces on many voyages, steering clear of well-trodden paths of mourning to find his own. Instead, 'Self-doubt is an misapplied algorithm .' The algorithm here is one determining a course you want to take, even if no one told you to. We are telling you to. — ILK Journal
Reviews:
Romo writes like a fire entertainer on a tightrope: the danger intensifies the beauty of the flames as they "carve constellations into the night.” — Heavy Feather Review
Laden with brilliant imagery, alliteration, and consonance, this collection lights a fire that never quite extinguishes itself. — Sundog Lit
The imaginative work in each poem shows a willingness to extend the boundaries of that self to explore other experiences and lives, or simply to create them for fun; Daniel Romo inhabits them all well and completely. — Backbone Press
A superb collection of necessary poetry, poetry that shocks us into another's pain and makes it universal. Poetry which asserts life with passion and commitment. Poetry worth the effort. — Poetix
Overall, the collection is united by an interesting focus on words, language, and communication—both in terms of substance and composition. — Santa Fe Writers Project
WHEN KEROSENE’S INVOLVED shoves beautiful sentence after beautiful sentence into every single prose poem. daniel romo’s writing takes a deep breath with you before screaming in your ear. not a scream for help, but a scream for recognition. — Probably Cryin
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