Word Simple

Harold J. Recinos

Jul 2017 · Wipf and Stock Publishers

About this ebook

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 school in New York City, Recinos befriended Nuyorican poets the late Miguel Piñero and Pedro Pietri who encouraged him to write and read poetry at the Nuyorican poets café. Word Simple is a collection of poetry that raises questions about how society is constructed from the context of people who are routinely silenced by history. Recinos’ poems describe the realities of faith, love, struggle, migration, refugee flight, urban depravity, the politics of hate, and the fierce anger of the indignity of a life of marginality in society. His poetry not only expresses outrage and despair in the face of unjust suffering in the world, but he projects the struggles and beauty of invisible people who tilt always toward recognition. By his choice of subjects in his poetry, Recinos provides readers with sensitive and ethical resources to show the horror and joys of life. Graffiti on a page!

About the author

Harold J. Recinos is professor of Church and Society at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. Among recent publications are Wading Through Many Voices: Toward a Theology of Public Conversation (Roman and Littlefield, 2011) and Other Seasons (Wipf and Stock, 2017), among other works. In 1993, Recinos completed the Doctor of Philosophy with honors in cultural anthropology at the American University in Washington, DC.