Silver Birch Press Congratulates Its Pushcart Prize Nominees

Silver Birch Press congratulates its six Pushcart Prize nominees for writing published during 2013:

Jeffrey C. Alfier, author of the poetry chapbook The Wolf Yearling (May 2013)

Rachel Carey, author of the novel Debt (February 2013)

Chris Forhan, author of the poetry chapbook Ransack and Dance (July 2013)

Ellaraine Lockie, author of the poetry chapbook Coffee House Confessions (February 2013)

Philippa Mayall, author of the memoir Phoenix (June 2013)

Daniel Romo, author of the poetry chapbook Romancing Gravity (May 2013)

We were honored to publish your work during 2013! 

Misfit Magazine reviews Daniel Romo poetry collections

Congratulations to Daniel Romo, author of the poetry collection Romancing Gravity (Silver Birch Press, 2013) on the great review of his chapbook (and previous collection, When Kerosene’s Involved) at misfitmagazine.net. The review appears below.

Growing up as a decidedly Not chulo type in Southern California was not a pleasant experience for Romo.  A self-described geeky, skinning kid, shy around girls, awkward, though plucky at sports, a decidedly not Macho, he somehow manages to view his upbringing with humor and panache.  Now a teacher and a voluminous writer, as these two collections show (Kerosene is well over 200 pages of concise prose poems, while Romancing is a mere 60 odd pages of free verse). Romo’s is a voice and point of view, that grows on you the more you read.  He is both empathetic and clear eyed, but not overly sentimental. In short, Romo is the kind of role model you could  safely entrust your children with, knowing they he remembers the pitfalls of youth and what is necessary, now, to move on with life.” misfitmagazine.net

Revision, poem by Daniel Romo

REVISION
by Daniel Romo

           Let’s say we’re seahorses. Let’s say our forgotten birthday candles
have melted into coral. Let’s say the coral is forgotten, too.
         Let’s say the water is repetition. It is high tide. We have washed ashore.
The children scoop us up with plastic shovels.
                       They drop us into half-filled buckets of sandy water
                               hoping to revive us.
Their mothers convince them to throw us back. Our bodies turn to foam.
                                                               We are already dead.
 
Let’s say we’re notorious bank robbers planning our heist from our hideout. 
                            Let’s say our masks are big yellow happy faces.
                            Let’s say we are bad men.
                            Our mothers have written us letters trying to convince us
                                                             to turn ourselves in.
      We rip them up and smile. We were always disobedient children.
                        Let’s say we’re cops who have been tipped off,
                        about to raid the hideout.
                        Let’s say our guns are loaded, and our laughs are loud.
                     
  Let’s say we’re liars and none of this happened.
            Let’s say we were seahorses.
Let’s say our birthdays were never celebrated.
                       Let’s say we’ve crossed out those times in our lives.
                                    
  Let’s say we’re convenient rough drafts.    

…”Revision” appears in the Silver Birch Press release Romancing Gravity, a collection of poems by Daniel Romo, available at Amazon.com.

Stickball, poem by Daniel Romo

STICKBALL
by Daniel Romo

Summers were a never-ending 7th inning,
and games stretched into the next day
when the sun no longer lit the cul-de-sac.

My brother’s knuckleball was an
experiment in flight pattern,
a taunting array of speculation:

                   juking and jutting,
       a hovering slow-dance
                                 inventing new steps
the batter could never learn.

My fastball was a humming blur of rocket science.

And whoever made contact deserved to
commandeer the moon.

The neighborhood kids were filler.

Portuguese soccer-playing
perpetual strikeout victims
always stuck out in right field,
because they were more skilled with their feet
than with their hands.

Today it’s the bottom of the 9th inning.
Two outs.

And we are dreamers posing as fathers
reminding our own children,
“Point your toe to the target.
Keep your elbow up.
And follow through on the pitch.”

Today I remember belting an old tennis ball
over the neighbor’s roof
into his backyard,
gliding around makeshift bases
with glorious fists raised
as if God was pulling our hands. 

PHOTO: “Stickball equipment” by Debbie Dell, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

“Stickball” appears in Daniel Romo‘s poetry collection ROMANCING GRAVITY, available at Amazon.com.

Romancing Gravity, poems by Daniel Romo

In May 2013, Silver Birch Press released ROMANCING GRAVITY, a collection of poems by Daniel Romo. The poems in ROMANCING GRAVITY navigate through worlds (and words) nestled in nostalgia, rooted in the uncanny, and primed with pain. Striking language and rich images frame gangbangers, classrooms, and family, while trying to carry the burdens that come with being alive. These are poems of baseball and breathing, of heaven and healing. The speakers of the poems wander from one world and into the next, looking down to find their footing, and looking up for proof that they exist.

FROM THE BACK COVER: 

“In ROMANCING GRAVITY Daniel Romo has written a memoir in poetry. It is the poetry of growing up in Southern California, of childhood games and fear, of adolescent dreams and braggadocio, and a young man’s coming into his own as a man and a poet. There are echoes of popular culture and the poems dance to the beat of an urban pulse. There are hallucinatory prose poems and sometimes the speaker sounds like an Old Testament prophet disguised as a homeless man, calling down curses on our decadent world. Lost children wave to us from the floor of the ocean. Do they wave in greeting or are they taking their leave? Either way, the reader waves back, the reader wants to dance or say ‘Yes!’ to these marvelous poems.” Richard Garcia, author of The Persistence of Objects

“Daniel Romo’s ROMANCING GRAVITY is a terrific collection—at once edgy, comical, and big-hearted. I was immediately drawn to his streetwise grit, his luminous vision of urban America. These are poems that swagger, that ‘boom boom sound’ and leave your ears ringing.” David Hernandez, author of Hoodwinked

“Daniel Romo finds surprising lyricism in school classrooms, TV shows, and yard sales in his southern California neighborhoods. Celebratory, irreverent, and deeply personal, the poems in ROMANCING GRAVITY capture the quotidian in stunning ways and reveal what keeps us earthbound.” Molly Bendall, author of Under the Quick

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Daniel Romo is the author of When Kerosene’s Involved (Black Coffee Press, 2013 — an updated version scheduled for a 2014 release by Mojave River Press & Review). His poetry and photography can be found in the Los Angeles Review, Gargoyle, MiPOesias, Yemassee, Hobart, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and teaches creative writing. He lives in Long Beach, California. More of his writing can be found at danielromo.net.

Find ROMANCING GRAVITY at Amazon.com. For this inspired collection, Silver Birch Press has nominated Daniel Romo for a 2013 Pushcart Prize.

Rave Review for Romancing Gravity: Poems by Daniel Romo

Kudos to Daniel Romo for his recent rave review at ESCAPE INTO LIFE, a blog that features art and literature by emerging and established artists from all over the world.

Kathleen Kirk, EIL Poetry Editor, offered a resounding endorsement of Romancing Gravity by Daniel Romo (Silver Birch Press, 2013), saying, in part:

Romancing Gravity is a book with balls. Stickball, baseball, football, tee ball. Swear words, anger, regret. Drive-in movies, magic shows, liquor stores. Current events, social commentary, nostalgia. And a car chase. It’s got prose poems, free verse, and a sestina that repeats the words ‘bugaboo,’ ‘uvula,’ and ‘cajones.’ Yes, ‘cajones.’ That takes cajones.” (Read the rest of Kathleen Kirk’s review at ESCAPE INTO LIFE.)

Find Romancing Gravity by Daniel Romo at Amazon.com.

For his remarkable writing, Silver Birch Press will nominate Daniel Romo for a 2013 Pushcart Prize. 

Misfit Magazine Reviews Romancing Gravity, poems by Daniel Romo

Congratulations to Daniel Romo, author of the poetry collection Romancing Gravity (Silver Birch Press, 2013) on the great review of his chapbook (and previous collection, When Kerosene’s Involved) at misfitmagazine.net. The review appears below.

Growing up as a decidedly Not chulo type in Southern California was not a pleasant experience for Romo.  A self-described geeky, skinning kid, shy around girls, awkward, though plucky at sports, a decidedly not Macho, he somehow manages to view his upbringing with humor and panache.  Now a teacher and a voluminous writer, as these two collections show (Kerosene is well over 200 pages of concise prose poems, while Romancing is a mere 60 odd pages of free verse). Romo’s is a voice and point of view, that grows on you the more you read.  He is both empathetic and clear eyed, but not overly sentimental. In short, Romo is the kind of role model you could  safely entrust your children with, knowing they he remembers the pitfalls of youth and what is necessary, now, to move on with life.” misfitmagazine.net

Revision, poem by Daniel Romo

REVISION
by Daniel Romo

           Let’s say we’re seahorses. Let’s say our forgotten birthday candles
have melted into coral. Let’s say the coral is forgotten, too.
         Let’s say the water is repetition. It is high tide. We have washed ashore.
The children scoop us up with plastic shovels.
                       They drop us into half-filled buckets of sandy water
                               hoping to revive us.
Their mothers convince them to throw us back. Our bodies turn to foam.
                                                               We are already dead.
 
Let’s say we’re notorious bank robbers planning our heist from our hideout. 
                            Let’s say our masks are big yellow happy faces.
                            Let’s say we are bad men.
                            Our mothers have written us letters trying to convince us
                                                             to turn ourselves in.
      We rip them up and smile. We were always disobedient children.
                        Let’s say we’re cops who have been tipped off,
                        about to raid the hideout.
                        Let’s say our guns are loaded, and our laughs are loud.
                     
  Let’s say we’re liars and none of this happened.
            Let’s say we were seahorses.
Let’s say our birthdays were never celebrated.
                       Let’s say we’ve crossed out those times in our lives.
                                    
  Let’s say we’re convenient rough drafts.    

…”Revision” appears in the Silver Birch Press release Romancing Gravity, a collection of poems by Daniel Romo, available at Amazon.com.

This Is…, Erasure Poem by Daniel Romo

We just received our second erasure poetry submission — created at erasures.wavebooks.com — by Daniel Romo, whose poetry appears in the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology and in Romancing Gravity, his new poetry collection from Silver Birch Press. Romo’s source material is The Land of Little Rain by Mary Austin (find the text here), a series of interrelated lyrical essays about the American Southwest first published in 1903.

THIS IS…
Erasure poem by Daniel Romo

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Daniel Romo is the author of the poetry collections When Kerosene’s Involved (Black Coffee Press, 2013) and Romancing Gravity (Silver Birch Press, 2013). His poetry and photography can be found in the Los Angeles Review, Gargoyle, MiPOesias, Yemassee, Hobart, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and teaches creative writing. He lives in Long Beach, California. More of his writing can be found at danielromo.net.

Daniel Romo at Moby’s Cafe, North Hollywood, 6/20/13, 8 p.m.

Daniel Romo, author of the recent Silver Birch Press poetry release ROMANCING GRAVITY, will read from his work as featured artist at an event hosted by Feral Fusion — a weekly series of spoken word performances.

WHEN: Thursday, June 20, 2013, starting at 8 p.m.

WHERE: Moby’s Cafe

ADDRESS: 5668 Cahuenga Blvd., North Hollywood, CA, 91601

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Daniel Romo is the author of When Kerosene’s Involved (Black Coffee Press, 2013). His poetry and photography can be found in the Los Angeles Review, Gargoyle, MiPOesias, Yemassee, Hobart, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and teaches creative writing. He lives in Long Beach, California. More of his writing can be found at danielromo.net. Find ROMANCING GRAVITY at Amazon.com.

ABOUT ROMANCING GRAVITY: The poems in ROMANCING GRAVITY navigate through worlds (and words) nestled in nostalgia, rooted in the uncanny, and prime with pain. Striking language and rich images frame gangbangers, classrooms, and family, while trying to carry the burdens that come with being alive. These are poems of baseball and breathing, of heaven and healing. The speakers of the poems wander from one world and into the next, looking down to find their footing, and looking up for proof that they exist.

“Daniel Romo’s ROMANCING GRAVITY is a terrific collection—at once edgy, comical, and big-hearted. I was immediately drawn to his streetwise grit, his luminous vision of urban America. These are poems that swagger, that ‘boom boom sound’ and leave your ears ringing.” David Hernandez, author of Hoodwinked