Description:
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.
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."