Description: 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 Nuyorican poet, the late Miguel Pinero, who encouraged him to write and read poetry at the Nuyorican poets' cafe. Other Seasons is a collection that aims to communicate something of what is felt by people who live in the overlooked contexts of marginality. His poems are like graffiti on public culture that memorialize and raise to the level of consciousness the beauty and obstinate spirit of workers, mothers, grandmothers, brothers, sisters, revolutionaries, undocumented immigrants, and those considered, even in religious gatherings, unworthy of love. Recinos' poetry celebrates and chastises the inner workings of the American Dream and moves readers to develop a compassionate awareness for the hopes, struggles, and suffering of others. His poetry not only expresses outrage and despair in the face of unjust suffering in the world, but he invites readers to see the beauty of people at the edges of society who are too often invisible.
Brief description: Harold J. Recinos is professor of church and society at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. Among his publications are The Bags We Carry (2026), On The Sight of Angels (2025), Words Chosen for the Wall (2024), Where the Sidewalks Meet (2022), The Days You Bring (2022) and The Looking Glass: Far and Near (2023). He completed his PhD with honors in cultural anthropology in 1993 from the American University in Washington, DC. Recinos says, "I can tell you that poetry looked for me in the barrio, on the subway, city parks, streets, stoops, corners, churches, and overlooked public spaces. I have always thought poetry is graffiti on public culture, lines about the mixed feelings of learned truth that originate from the permanent Spanglish knot in my throat."