Books

The Bags We Carry is poetry that offers a linguistic painting of public culture leaving one with images, triggered thoughts, and a mix of feelings about bearing open the hopes, struggles, and vulnerabilities of human beings yearning for the kind of truth rationality alone overlooks. These poems will not give directions to Times Square nor...

On the Sight of Angels is poetry that makes the American context the focus of thinking, imagination, and observation to cast a light on experiences of exclusion and belonging. The poetry in this collection is presented as a mode of knowing knotted with a larger world of human experiences, giving voice to both social divisions and new...

Words Chosen for the Wall is poetry testifying to the deepest elements in the American dream casting a light on cultural diversity, experiences of exclusion and belonging, and the walls of dividing hostility in society. It explores new paths that leap for unity, empathy, and hope. In this collection, poems give voice to experiences in a divided...

Audio version of a work creating a fusion between the personal and the public in verse that is searching, expansive, and walking hurt streets. The work is 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...

The Place across the River addresses defective systems of culture, politics, religion, and social relationship with poetic discourse reflecting the predicament of the abandoned and rejected whose voices carry little social power. The collection of poems provides an unforgettable portrait of life on the margins, where the working class, Black,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

“Cornered by the Dark is a triumph.”
—Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
W. 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’ 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...

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...

The Coming Day documents life at the edges of American society in ways that are both personal and universal in human experience. In this collection, poems stand at the crossroads of anthropology, theology, history, and ethnic identity to address issues of violence, poverty, immigrants’ rights, family life, drug addiction, cultural diversity, and...

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...

Recinos’ love for poetry dates back to being abandoned by Latino parents at age twelve to live on New York City streets. When he turned sixteen, he was taken into the family of a white Presbyterian minister and guided back to school. After finishing high school, Recinos attended undergraduate school in Ohio and graduate school in New York, where...

Recinos discovered a love for poetry living on the streets after being abandoned by immigrant Latino parents. At age sixteen, a White Presbyterian minister made him a part of his family and guided him back to school. Recinos finished high school, attended undergraduate school in Ohio and later graduate school in New York, where he befriended the...

Recinos discovered a love for poetry after being abandoned by Latino immigrant parents and living on the streets dealing with drugs, poverty, violence, racial discrimination, and existential desolation. After several homeless years, he was taken into the family of a white Presbyterian minister and guided back to school. Later, attending graduate...

Recinos fell in love with poetry growing up on the streets, after being abandoned by immigrant Latino parents. Finding shelter in public libraries, Recinos discovered that poetry was a way to make sense of living on the streets in the pitiable condition of teen homelessness and heroin addiction. After being unofficially adopted at the age of...

Recinos discovered a love for poetry living on the streets after being abandoned by immigrant Latino parents. At age sixteen, a White Presbyterian minister made him part of his family and guided him back to school. Recinos finished high school, attended undergraduate school in Ohio and later graduate school in New York, where he befriended the...

Harold J. Recinos is the son of a Guatemalan father and Puerto Rican mother who at age twelve was abandoned to New York City streets. After living on the streets between the ages of twelve and sixteen, Recinos met a Presbyterian minister who had discovered the God of the oppressed while active in civil rights marches in the 60s. The minister...