Ron Paul Salutsky was born and raised in Somerset, Kentucky, and now lives in Tallahassee, Florida.

Other poems by Ron Paul Salutsky in Verse Daily:
April 18, 2008:   "Bends" "I'm always wrong, in fact..."

Books by Ron Paul Salutsky:

Other poems on the web by Ron Paul Salutsky:
"Last Night in a Cheap Motel Before Heading to the Caribbean"
"Camping"
"Dear Buck Fever"

Ron Paul Salutsky's Website.

Ron Paul Salutsky on Twitter.

About Romeo Bones:

"In Romeo Bones, dialect becomes a vivid geography. Salutsky describes distances and altitudes with colloquial fervor. The distances are hearts removed from home. The altitudes are soul-making. Here are poems measured to an exacting world."
—Donald Revell

"Ron Salutsky takes his readers from the deepest memories of childhood to the edge of our loneliest moments when the stars bloom in the night sky, and the trees and wind tell us their secrets. This is a world in motion, a world filled with goodbyes. Cars travel deserted highways, and we witness acts that he translates into poems of arching bravura. This is a deeply felt and moving debut collection."
—Barbara Hamby

"In Romeo Bones the wrenching details of nature, and the details of an individual person's activities and being, constantly meet, grapple, come to an understanding, in these poems that are realistic portraits and landscapes and also expand beyond that to larger questions of existence. Sometimes we're 'In a primeval meadow with God / like a lover above . . . ,' sometimes we sketch out the fear and anger (and other attributes) of insect brains as we crunch them during a meditation and confession under a grapevine. No one and nothing is spared in this poet's inventory. Yet love is as persistent and formidable and phenomenal as any of these -- whether it's up against self, nature, or metaphysics -- in poem after poem. The encounters of all these elements are various and unique, unexpected then gripping. There are 'horse cripplers,' coyotes which discuss Iraq, pornography, and language's role in society, over a dinner of tomatoes and tomcats, and speakers who seek each other among constantly revolving emotional conditions."
—Arthur Vogelsang

"The poems in Romeo Bones teeter between the poles of faith and despair and make of that place a holy ground. Reading this book, I'm reminded of a Jesuit prayer 'Dear God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul...' In the brave trajectory of Ron Salutsky's debut collection, I trace a pilgrim's stance and find that it is his urge towards belief that makes the fallen world inscribed here, from moment to anguished moment, a paradise."
—Claudia Keelan