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 America's 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 Spaceis 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.