Breathing Space

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 sixteen into a white American family from Ohio that moved to New York he began a drug-free life went to college and eventually earned a PhD in cultural anthropology with honors from The American University in Washington DC. Breathing Space is a poetry collection that raises to the level of consciousness the beauty and obstinate spirit of workers mothers grandmothers brothers sisters revolutionaries undocumented immigrants and those considered 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 the most vulnerable members of society. Recinos poetry not only expresses outrage and despair in the face of unjust suffering in the world but the poems uniquely invite readers to see the beauty of people at the edges of society. Recinos is a poet of empathy conviction and indomitable faith. He speaks for those who like him have eaten the bitter bread of social oppression but unlike him have found their way / into dark boxes marked for the grave be they junkies the destitute or the immigrant poor. He grieves the loss of Americas commitment to justice the impossible dream and extols both nation and God to build a place to call home. --Orlando Menes Professor English Department College of Arts and Letters University of Notre Dame Breathing Space is a beautiful collection of poems that exemplify a breath of fresh air. Harold Recinos writes intimate compositions of his personal and community experiences that have become an integral part of this other American way of life. Though he underscores a life of despair hunger sadness solitude and tragedy Recinos also announces a cycle of love celebration happiness triumph hope justice and above all salvation and resurrection. --Luis William Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Spanish Recinos adds his sonorous voice to the struggles of our times. He is a poet of witness and quiet rage. His poems stitch a tapestry that goes beyond the personal and into the universal human necessity for dignity and beauty and truth. Breathing Space is a book everyone must read. --Virgil Suarez Professor English Department Florida State University Harold J. Recinos is Professor of Church and Society at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. Among his recent publications are Harold J. Recinos ed. Wading Through Many Voices: Toward a Theology of Public Conversation (Roman and Littlefield 2011); Voices on the Corner (Wipf and Stock 2015); Crossing Bridges (Floricanto Press 2016); Other Seasons (Wipf and Stock 2017); and Word Simple (Wipf and Stock 2017). Recinos completed the Doctor of Philosophy with honors in cultural anthropology in 1993 from the American University in Washington DC.