The Coming Day documents life at the edges of American society in ways that are both personal and universal in human experience. In this collection, poems stand at the crossroads of anthropology, theology, history, and ethnic identity to address issues of violence, poverty, immigrants' rights, family life, drug addiction, cultural diversity, and the struggle and hope of those too long ignored. The craft in these poems keenly documents life across the vast landscape of the United States and parts of Latin America to effectively make the world of forgotten people comprehensible. Recinos' collection seeks to give voice to the invisible people of the Americas born on God's day off.
Harold J. Recinos discovered a love for poetry after being abandoned by Latino parents and living on the streets in New York, Los Angeles, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. At age sixteen, a White Presbyterian minister made him a part of his family and guided him back to school. Recinos finished high school and attended undergraduate school in Ohio. He later went to graduate school in New York, where he befriended the late Nuyorican poet Miguel Piñero, who encouraged him to write and read poetry at the Nuyorican poets café.
“Harold J. Recinos’ collection, The Coming Day, is filled with poems of great cariño, of a sensibility that is attentive to the faces and voices of those forgotten and rendered invisible by systems of oppression and neglect. His indignation at injustice, his loving attentiveness to the least and lowest remind us that we create better communities, countries, selves by the quality of attention we bring to bear on all those who are part of our many circles. His is an abiding and big-hearted imagination.”
—Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies
“Harold J. Recinos is the Truth! He is a bona fide voice for those seldom heard: those society ignores, beats back, keeps down, shoves out, erases. The Coming Day is a clarion call of compassion and balm for healing that must take place in order for us to advance as a human race. Recinos’ poems are stand-ins for searing soul-searching for a world sliding off its axis. These poems are the most necessary nourishment for they do what James Baldwin posits—bear witness! Recinos is a timely poet . . . needed now more than ever.”
—Tony Medina, author of I Am Alfonso Jones and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy
“These poems are the stabbing rhythms of a passionate discourse between a culture’s fading past and its hopeful future. This lovingly sad and lovingly alive collection teems with Harold Recinos’ graceful voice of a street philosopher, a powerful pastor, and a kind professor, while never pulling its punches.”
—Ernesto Quiñonez, author of Bodega Dreams
“The poems astutely gathered in The Coming Day are so timely and urgent. The taking away of children from mothers, the inhumane conditions at the border, the way the rest of us turn the other cheek—these are great poems of witness and great humanity. Recinos gives voice to so much that remains unspeakable, dark, and disturbing about how people suffer at the hands of governments and politicians. These are immensely important and necessary poems everyone must read.”
—Virgil Suarez, author of The Pained Bunting Last Molt (forthcoming)
“Deeply felt and urgent, The Coming Day presents a unique voice that demands to be heard, to be heeded. No one but Harold J. Recinos could have written poems as searing and transformative as these.”
—Lorraine M. López, author of The Darling
“Throughout his distinguished career, Harold J. Recinos has displayed the rare ability to be equally at home in the realm of academic writing and creative writing. It is quite a gift and feat. And so is this: whether operating in the vein of one or the other of these expressive modes, he has always been able to challenge and inspire us all the same with moving words that probe deep and hope big. These powerful poems on a wide variety of themes continue and extend this trend. I highly recommend them to one and all!”
—Benjamin Valentin, author of Theological Cartographies: Mapping the Encounter with God, Humanity, and Christ
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