The Days You Bring is poetry that documents the nuances of the human condition at the edges of society by lifting up people negotiating their sense of the call and fragility of life. The collection comments on life on the streets, in cities, villages, contemporary society, and across borders by describing the character of human beings who especially insist they do not have to beg the question of their humanity in the world. The poems invite the reader to step into the world of persons who carry the long history of inequality in their souls and talk about beauty, freedom, violence, legal barriers, delayed dreams, neighbourhood troubles, the struggles for equality, and ways of transcending suffering. Each poem creates a space for the reader to bring their own baggage, identity, experience, joys, and suffering to a space of confession, hope, and release. The collection is a contribution to the artistic expression of our time, with its polarization and social upheaval, and cultivates the courage to reflect in the world with the marginal men, women, and children seeking the common humanization life together.
Harold J. Recinos is professor of church and society at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. Among his publications are Good News from the Barrio: Prophetic Witness for the Church (2006), Wading Through Many Voices: Toward a Theology of Public Conversation (2011), The Coming Day (Wipf & Stock, 2019), Wading in the River (Wipf & Stock, 2021), and Where the Sidewalks Meet (Wipf & Stock, 2022). He completed a PhD with honors in cultural anthropology in 1993 from the American University in Washington, DC. Since the mid-1980s, Recinos has worked with the Salvadoran refugee community and with marginal communities in El Salvador on issues of human rights.
“In The Days You Bring, we walk the ‘long walk’ with Recinos through the barrio’s streets, weeping unabashedly for its ‘crucified people’ and left to contemplate the ‘horrifying obscenity of forgetfulness.’ Yet so, too, do we revel in its subtle raptures and improbable blossoms. Against the ‘thick silence’ of an indifferent world and the ‘pious white lies’ of history, The Days You Bring asks us, Can you hear the barrio’s song? Its canto and hymns? Its ‘unanswered prayers’?”
—Éric Morales-Franceschini, University of Georgia
“This is a magnificent work of art. . . . These poems urgently reprimand white Americans for their belief in a God who sanctions a racist capitalism that can’t afford to care about the barrio, the jail, and the border. Recinos is ‘carrying this cold / country in my brown body’ with ecstatic grief shot through with grace restored to its name.”
—Katie Ford, University of California, Riverside
“I have often thought that American presidents should add a poet or two to their cabinets. It seems to me that along with financiers, generals, lawyers, physicians, and scientists, a bard should be part of this assembly of wisdom for a nation. Harold Recinos is an operatic poet for our time. In his new collection, he tells Americans exactly what they need to hear right now—full blast—about the life we share so they can change it.”
—Lori Marie Carlson-Hijuelos, author of Voices in First Person: Reflections on Latino Identity
“The impassioned poems of protest in The Days You Bring contribute to poetry’s social justice tradition, offering us closely observed and tender chronicles of the innocent who suffer. Recinos’s outpourings of torrential rage and sorrow are leavened by finely grained moments of soft grace.”
—Joy Castro, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
“In this collection of truth-telling poetry, Harold Recinos weeps with love for the dehumanized and marginalized of society. He laments over injustice, yet he does more than this. He dreams of a more luminous future and hopes amid human hurts until he can say in the end, literally, ‘Amen!’ If you desire to be lit by the fire of a just God, read this book. These poems are from the tongue of a prophet.”
—Luke A. Powery, Duke University
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