The Looking Glass: Far and Near
Ebook
The Looking Glass: Far and Near is poetry that searches voices in the cities of a divided America faced with an unraveling democracy and across borders where people negotiating the fragility of life offer a vision of transcendence through recovery of our common humanity. The leaps of imagination expressed in each poem reflect on issues such as COVID-19, lethal police violence, criminalized kids, school mass shootings, asylum seekers, race relations, reckless politics, and the contributions of overlooked human beings to the ongoing process of defining national values such as freedom, justice, and equality. The collection is a contribution to the artistic expression of our time with its polarization and social upheaval, and it freshly illuminates the ways rejected human beings use their agency to lurch toward justice and give voice to the possibilities of regard for all human beings.
“In this collection of poetry, Harold Recinos inhabits the world of those that live on the edge of society, the migrants that cross rivers at nighttime to find refuge in a land that often turns them back. Recinos speaks of the inherent racism that people—Brown people, women, emigrants—experience in America, and he does it with extraordinary depth and beauty. This is an extraordinary collection of poems that will break your heart and inspire change in our fragmented world.”
—Marjorie Agosin, author of the Pura Belpré Award–winning I Lived on Butterfly Hill
“Seemingly drawing inspiration from the likes of Whitman, Neruda, and Cardenal, The Looking Glass: Far and Near lifts up the voices of the dispossessed and abandoned Central Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and other Brown people with prophetic and poetic moral indignation. This moving book of poetry brings forth faith and hope despite the last would-be tyrant’s efforts to destroy democracy and join a heartless world.”
—Greg Dawes, author of Pablo Neruda’s Poetry and Politics
“Each poem takes us step by step beyond the dehumanizing rush of modernity in search of paradise lost. In a world burdened by technology, climate change, and hate, this collection offers the reader a moment of simplicity, beauty, and love.”
—Linda M. Rodríguez Guglielmoni, author of En barco de papel: La aventura de María Angelina y su papa Eugenio María de Hostos.
“Harold Recinos is the fierce and relentless theologian of the Bronx’s barrios and bodegas. He is the poet laureate of First Avenue and Spanglish. These poems bear witness to his immigrant community and show us the lives of those who live at the margins of hope.”
—Donald Platt, author of Swansdown
“Rather than dwell in nostalgia, these poems ask us to consider how the present can be made better by the lessons of the past and by careful study of the moment—of human voices and the intricacy of their ‘inexhaustible light.’ Harold Recinos has written song of hope for the present. Sit with this marvel. You will be better for it.”
—Rodney Gomez, author of Arsenal with Praise Song.
- Title: The Looking Glass: Far and Near
- Author: Harold J. Recinos
- Publisher: Resource Publications
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781666757927, 9781666757903, 166675790X, 9781666757910, 1666757918, 1666757926
- Resource ID: LLS:9781666757927
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-06-28T19:43:53Z
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), Wading in the River (Wipf & Stock, 2021), Where the Sidewalks Meet (Wipf & Stock, 2022), and The Days You Bring (Wipf & Stock, 2022). 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.