Bruce Smith

After Dark

Arts & Literature

“Like Walt Whitman, who found ‘letters of God dropt in the street,’ Harold Recinos finds in the ‘sacramental gutter’ the reliquaries and names of the exiled, banished, and broken by a hostile, almost fatal country. From his side of the Jordan, he sings in a braided Spanish and English—sometimes with a white hand around his throat—of tortured brown bodies and a contested notion of ‘home.’ He is a magus who recognizes and subverts the savage. He is a minister who attends to Bronx musicians, barrio residents, Breonna Taylor, and border crossers, delivering ‘just the right amount of Spanish balm.’ His is a blistering, prophetic song. He is unafraid, indefatigable, and necessary.”

The Bags We Carry

Arts & Literature

“Harold Recinos testifies to the forgotten, the forsaken, the unseen, and the unrecorded. He is the poet of tamale makers, dish washers, citizens who remember the Mesoamerican sky. His prayers, songs, and tales have an inverse side that can be seen as invectives, demands, and truths. His lyrics are indictments, declarations, and instruments against invisibility. These poems are countermeasures that defy the ‘syntax of hate.’ They are small sacramental cracks in armor of empire.”