Harold J Recinos

Tell Somebody is poetry about what is seen, touched, tasted, and heard that takes on the beauty and ugliness in society. Each poem seeks to persuade the overlooked into public light. The collection comments on the exclusion familiar to people that have their backs pressed against the wall and are concerned to arrest the consequences of inequality issuing forth from cultures of cruelty. Readers are welcomed to step into the existential reality of persons who challenge the moral claims of society upon the marginalized found on the streets, in the workplace, and crossing borders. The collection is a contribution to the artistic expression of a time of social conflict, and it offers a careful and thought-provoking resource by which to reflect on the complex issues of identity and justice in the United States.

The Looking Glass: Far and Near is poetry that searches voices in the cities of a divided America faced with an unraveling democracy and across borders where people negotiating the fragility of life offer a vision of transcendence through recovery of our common humanity. The leaps of imagination expressed in each poem reflect on issues such as COVID-19, lethal police violence, criminalized kids, school mass shootings, asylum seekers, race relations, reckless politics, and the contributions of overlooked human beings to the ongoing process of defining national values such as freedom, justice, and equality. The collection is a contribution to the artistic expression of our time with its polarization and social upheaval, and it freshly illuminates the ways rejected human beings use their agency to lurch toward justice and give voice to the possibilities of regard for all human beings.

The Looking Glass: Far and Near is poetry that searches voices in the cities of a divided America faced with an unraveling democracy and across borders where people negotiating the fragility of life offer a vision of transcendence through recovery of our common humanity. The leaps of imagination expressed in each poem reflect on issues such as COVID-19, lethal police violence, criminalized kids, school mass shootings, asylum seekers, race relations, reckless politics, and the contributions of overlooked human beings to the ongoing process of defining national values such as freedom, justice, and equality. The collection is a contribution to the artistic expression of our time with its polarization and social upheaval, and it freshly illuminates the ways rejected human beings use their agency to lurch toward justice and give voice to the possibilities of regard for all human beings.

The Days You Bring is poetry that documents the nuances of the human condition at the edges of society by lifting up people negotiating their sense of the call and fragility of life. The collection comments on life on the streets, in cities, villages, contemporary society, and across borders by describing the character of human beings who especially insist they do not have to beg the question of their humanity in the world. The poems invite the reader to step into the world of persons who carry the long history of inequality in their souls and talk about beauty, freedom, violence, legal barriers, delayed dreams, neighbourhood troubles, the struggles for equality, and ways of transcending suffering. Each poem creates a space for the reader to bring their own baggage, identity, experience, joys, and suffering to a space of confession, hope, and release. The collection is a contribution to the artistic expression of our time, with its polarization and social upheaval, and cultivates the courage to reflect in the world with the marginal men, women, and children seeking the common humanization life together.

Recinos's love for poetry began on the streets of the South Bronx and the experience of being abandoned by Latino parents at age twelve to live on them. On the streets, Recinos discovered a world of extreme poverty and drugs, until four years later he was taken into the family of a White Presbyterian minister and guided back into school. In graduate school in New York City, Recinos befriended the Nuyorican poets the late Miguel Pinero and Pedro Pietri who encouraged him to write and read poetry at the Nuyorican poets cafe. In Where the Sidewalks Meet, Recinos uses poetry like graffiti on public culture, to make references to the invisible in plain sight, and talk about border crossings. These poems delicately string together the disregarded world of excluded, muted, and rejected human beings and ""shouts out the names"" of those the world only cares to look at sideways.

Recinos's love for poetry began on the streets of the South Bronx and the experience of being abandoned by Latino parents at age twelve to live on them. On the streets, Recinos discovered a world of extreme poverty and drugs, until four years later he was taken into the family of a White Presbyterian minister and guided back into school. In graduate school in New York City, Recinos befriended the Nuyorican poets the late Miguel Pinero and Pedro Pietri who encouraged him to write and read poetry at the Nuyorican poets cafe. In Where the Sidewalks Meet, Recinos uses poetry like graffiti on public culture, to make references to the invisible in plain sight, and talk about border crossings. These poems delicately string together the disregarded world of excluded, muted, and rejected human beings and ""shouts out the names"" of those the world only cares to look at sideways.

“Cornered by the Dark is a triumph.” —Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar WaoW. H. Auden, Jorge Luis Borges, Howard Thurman, Julia Equivel, Thomas Merton, Langston Hughes, Pedro Pietri and Miguel Piñero, in their work make a connection between poetry, social criticism and the meaning of life together—that is a part of Harold Recinos’ literary labor. His work creates a fusion between the personal and the public in verse that is searching, expansive, and walking hurt streets. Cornered by the Dark is a work about truth-telling and witness-bearing to the marginal men, women, and children who tell their story about a culture of indifference and callousness while finding courage and compassion to hope in everyday life. Cornered by the Dark is published under Paraclete Press's Iron Pen imprint. In the book of Job, a suffering man pours out his anguish to his Maker. From the depths of his pain, he reveals a trust in God's goodness that is stronger than his despair, giving humanity some of the most beautiful and poetic verses of all time. Paraclete's Iron Pen imprint is inspired by this spirit of unvarnished honesty and tenacious hope.

Recinos' love for poetry began on the tormented streets of the South Bronx and the experience of being abandoned by Latino parents at age twelve to live on them. On the streets, Recinos discovered a world of extreme poverty and drugs, until four years later he was taken into the family of a White Presbyterian minister and guided back into school. In graduate school in New York City, Recinos befriended the Nuyorican poets the late Miguel Pinero and Pedro Pietri, who encouraged him to write and read poetry at the Nuyorican poets cafe. After Dark is poetry that speaks distinctively of the cultural and worldly experience of Black and Brown humanity driven by the resilience and challenging worlds that impose human limitations. Recinos uses the poetic instrument to enable readers to hear the history and share the experiences of people who see hope in ""the brutal atmosphere / of this land of purple mountain majesties / lashed to fierce grief."" Recinos is a poet who writes between the lines and with a Spanglish vision for life.

Wading in the River offers a poetic voice about the wonders of the world in the context of daily struggles with marginality and discloses the agency of cultural actors in them. The collection's poems tell a story of longing and loss, injustice and resilience, terror and beauty, anguish and hope for society. Wading in the River offers readers the subject matter that enjoins personal experience to public life and puts a human face on abstractions like justice, poverty, racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, police brutality, politics, and religion. In these poems, words seek to cut through the complexity of perception to expansively loosen a new way to find visionary clarity and to think passionately about dark spaces in social reality.

Recinos' love for poetry dates back to being raised on the tormented streets of the South Bronx and the experience of being abandoned by Latino parents at age twelve. On the streets, Recinos discovered a world of extreme poverty and drugs, until four years later he was taken in by a White Presbyterian minister and guided back into school. When in graduate school in New York City, he befriended Nuyorican poets Miguel Pinero and Pedro Pietri, who encouraged him to write and read poetry at the Nuyorican poets cafe. Recinos' poetry makes a connection between the poetic imagination, social criticism, and the meaning of life together in a diverse society. No Room is poetry that creates a fusion between the personal and the public in verse that is searching, expansive, and walking hurt streets. In this collection, Recinos encourages readers to use their imagination to live into invisible publics and to pause in the places where the voiceless speak. No Room offers images, feelings, and stories that crack dividing walls of hostility and nativist prohibitions and capture the full complexity of life experienced from the barrio to the American public square.