Ra Mu Aki of AKA
Productions writes that Dan O.’s poetry displays “a ruthless honesty
encompassed by a seeking intelligence, piercing wit and gentle, often
self-mocking humor as he opens both his heart and personal experience in his
commitment to see and share. His voice is that of a man who has suffered
and reflected upon it enough to decide that suffering is not all there is; his
language brisk with the subtle discipline of every syllable selected with
patience, passion and care.”
Professor Rhonda Magee, author of “The Third Reconstruction: An Alternative
to Race Consciousness and Colorblindedness in Post-Slavery America,” “Racial
Suffering as Human Suffering” and many other essays, writes that Dan O.’s
“language and imagery are beautiful, lilting; it draws you in…the subjects are
profound and he is masterful in the way he presents them. The respect, the reverence, his poetry
reveals for the everyday tragedy of human existence makes one more aware of the
beauty, tragedy, spirit and mystery within it all…he is utterly good at what he
does.”
Michael Basinski, in review of Dan O.s poems in the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, describes Dan O.’s poetry as “a new species, mysterious and blazing.”
Elz Desmangles of Poetry Mission writes that Dan O. is “a gifted reader always present to each subtle sentiment underlying each written word. But this is what I love most about Dan O.’s poetry: Dan O. takes feelings like “pain” out of an imaginary hell, “love” out of the wispy, dreamy heart-shaped clouds, and “fear” out of the fantasized terrorizing dark closet and brings them all back to earth, right where YOU are. Dan O. always has a pile of fresh work, he rarely reads the same thing twice, and he has a perspicacious ability for discovering magical things…seashells in the Mission, a banana tree on Market Street.”
Some guy who works at Cole Hardware told Dan O., “Wow, I really like your stuff.”