Words Chosen for the Wall
()
About this ebook
Harold J. Recinos
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 (editor, 2011), Where the Sidewalks Meet (2022), The Days You Bring (2022) and The Looking Glass: Far and Near (2023). He completed his 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.
Read more from Harold J. Recinos
Voices on the Corner Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOther Seasons Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWord Simple Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBreathing Space Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCornered by the Dark: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfter Eden Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Place across the River Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTell Somebody Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWading in the River Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStony the Road Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Days You Bring Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhere the Sidewalks Meet Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Looking Glass: Far and Near Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfter Dark Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Words Chosen for the Wall
Related ebooks
Wading in the River Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Place across the River Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Days You Bring Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhere the Sidewalks Meet Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfter Dark Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Looking Glass: Far and Near Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfter Eden Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTell Somebody Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStony the Road Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFifty Years & Other Poems Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5James Weldon Johnson: The Best Works Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJames Weldon Johnson – The Major Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoint of Entry: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSnake In The Spine, Wolf In The Heart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAll the Songs We Sing: Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Carolina African American Writers' Collective Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5America and Other Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBorn in the USA - Exploring American Poems. The New York State Poets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTree of Metamorphoses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStill, I Taste the Dawn Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetry of Stephen Vincent Benet - Young Adventure: "We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings'T was in Dixie Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLight of Wings: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBorn in the USA - Exploring American Poems. The South-East Poets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBetween Gone and Everlasting: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Song of the Stone Wall Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBorn in the USA - Exploring American Poems. The New England Poets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBrothers of the Blade Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ballad Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGospel Night Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sun and Her Flowers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beowulf: A New Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPretty Boys Are Poisonous: Poems Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Everything Writing Poetry Book: A Practical Guide To Style, Structure, Form, And Expression Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Words Chosen for the Wall
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Words Chosen for the Wall - Harold J. Recinos
Words Chosen for the Wall
Harold J. Recinos
Words Chosen for the Wall
Copyright ©
2024
Harold J. Recinos. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,
199
W.
8
th Ave., Suite
3
, Eugene, OR
97401
.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199
W.
8
th Ave., Suite
3
Eugene, OR
97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 979-8-3852-2002-1
hardcover isbn: 979-8-3852-2003-8
ebook isbn: 979-8-3852-2004-5
version number 073024
Table of Contents
Title Page
Superior
The Islands
Tyrants
Treasure
Gaza
October
Rivers
Fine Day
Evening
Amor
Decolonial
New Americans
Conversion
Headstone
Lady
Migrant Child
The Poor
Tired
Moon
The Country
Flea Market
Awake
Savior, Savior
Return
The Massacre
Campesinos
Self-Portrait
Sacred Mother
Restless
Broken English Dream
The Botanica
Solitude
The Knot
Things
The Steps
Harlem Days
The Morning
Evening
Speech
The Junkie
Hanging Out
Together
The Caravan
The Gift
The Martyr
Silence
The Trip
Airport
Baroque
Waiting Room
Zip Gun
The Tenement
The Letter
The Backyard
Flaco
Machu Picchu
Today
Old Church
The Nation
The Cart
The Skiff
Sleep
Waiting
The Boy
Homecoming
The Bridge
Kitchen Sink
The Innocent
Terror
The Slaughter
Words
The End
Night
Shots
The Story
Moonlight
Waiting
River Bank
Jimmy
The Veteran
Psalm 71
Darkness
Certainty
The Child
The Library
Cloudy
Christmas Carol
Frosty
Daughter
Times Square
Remember
Abandoned
Perspective
Christmas
Piety
Nuestra Señora
The Wall
Seasonal Letter
The Walk
Lament
Deus, ubi es
New Year
Waiting
The Season
Listen
Potomac River
Valentine’s Day
Snowy Day
Catholic School
Americano
The Visitor
Breakfast
Father
Swimming Hole
The Future
Sunday
The Stench
The Walk
The Boys
Lost
The Kids
The Call
Fashion
Few Words
Little Girl
Love
Confession
Sleepless
The Prison
Books
Sweetness
Still Voice
Twists
Morning
Crucifixion
Mr. Ex-President
Romero
The Woods
Speak
Memory
Touch
El Salvador
Faces
Spanish Kind
Vida
Illness
Disappeared
Strange
Citizens Beware
For Heaven’s Sake
Good Friday
Jazz
The Child
The Block
Piety
Hidden
"Words Chosen for the Wall is a conversation with country, oppressors, a silent God, love, and familia. Harold Recinos punches through the divide with the voice that stands with the wounded human. One moment you are walking along the river and the next on the edge of the earth at Machu Picchu, Recinos leaves no stone unturned in this collection, he throws everything at us, including the kitchen sink."
—Edward Vidaurre
Author of By Throat, by Miracle: New & Selected Poems
"Amid prayers, protests, recollections, conjurings, and calls-to-action, Words Chosen for the Wall voices the particularities of a future archaeology for a world in ruin, where the wretched of the earth are not only given names but imprinted on public grounds. In this collection, Harold Recinos’s poetry knows that the story of the street also tells the story of the ‘living and everyone who now mourns.’"
—Christopher Rey Pérez
Author of gauguin’s notebook: a retrospective
"In Words Chosen for the Wall, Harold Recinos sings an urban song of barrio youth who grapple against a nation intent on their destruction, while proudly tagging tenement walls with ‘Ora Pro Nobis!’ With rhythmic consistency, Recinos hews columnar stanzas that stand like lyrical candlesticks lit for Spanish Mass, like stipes of a bisected crucifix, like love letters inscribed on posts of cedar, pine, or cypress. With an interrogatory spirit and indelible voice, Recinos refines his poetics of Americana, class struggle, and Catholic liberation."
—Diego Báez
Author of Yaguareté White: Poems
Like an archeologist excavating layers in the cartographies of memory, Harold Recinos weaves the reader into piercing stories of childhood and the communal lives of a people who forge life from death and wholeness from the shards of time. The poems of this book are to be contemplated, for they will reveal the world of the poor and of the God who is encountered in the tenements of New York City, in the villages of El Salvador, in the rubble of Gaza, and in every rejected place where holiness has pitched its tent and dwells.
—Leo Guardado
Author of Church as Sanctuary: Reconstructing Refuge in an Age of Forced Displacement
"Thomas Merton states that when people ‘[live] out of touch with other people they tend to lose that deep sense of spiritual realities which only pure love can give.’ In Words Chosen for the Wall, Harold Recinos finds God has become elusive in churches oblivious to people’s lived realities. Recinos leads us in search for a God sometimes located where the marginalized congregate, where ‘herbs from their tiny villages’ are the greatest gifts."
—Alma Rosa Alvarez
Author of Liberation Theology in Chicana/o Literature: Manifestations of Feminist and Gay Identities
Superior
you claim to be superior
in thought, goodness and
color of skin. how peculiar
it must be to live history
inside a supreme fallacy that
people like me who have stayed
whole no matter how often
you dangled us from trees or
sliced us to pieces find thousands
of ways to protest to rush the end
of empire’s atrocities.
The Islands
I have lived on two islands
for many years, one with a
tropical sky beneath which
old men pushed out to sea,
another chiseled from steel
and concrete both loud with
the poor’s lamenting voices.
I have found on them traces
of suffering shaped by the
Lords of the earth who never
hear the frail wishes of those
they chain and dreadfully hurt.
I have breathed the air of two
islands in neighborhoods that
believe God knows things are
wrong, searched for answers in
the places petitioning for simple
blessings and cursed the world
where the creator of things ends
sentences ordering deportation
for women with braided hair, the
kids with rosaries and young men
who work harder than Adam and
Eve ever believed possible. I have
lived next to walls that have ears
and whispered into them gathered
dreams.
Tyrants
a republic made by the blood
of the tired poor who suffer and
labor for years with broken backs
has no freedom to impart or light
to overwhelm the darkness in its
corridors of government. the tears
of those not considered will only
go on collecting in puddles as they
have ever since God in big steeple
churches decided not to say a word
to the wretched of the earth who
are not on speaking terms with a
religion lacking love for the stomped,
cursed, tortured, and killed. a republic
that bends its knees to pray to a God
that claps for executioners, the Herodian
thugs nailing the poor to cheap wood
trees, and