Stony the Road

Harold J. Recinos

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781532674402
  9781532674419
• eBook ISBN:
  9781532674426
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Recinos’ love for poetry dates back to being abandoned by Latino parents at age twelve to live on New York City streets. When he turned sixteen, he was taken into the family of a white Presbyterian minister and guided back to school. After finishing high school, Recinos attended undergraduate school in Ohio and graduate school in New York, where he befriended the Nuyorican poets Miguel Piñero and Pedro Pietri, who encouraged him to write and read poetry at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Stony the Road engages life outside of mainstream American society and picks its way through places of despair and marginality to the revelations of belonging that protest indifference and inequality. The collection raises questions and proposes responses to the crisis of understanding in economic and political life, as well as the cultural narrative that America welcomes strangers. The poems tap into the changing mood of American life and the obscured world of rejected human beings and communities by exploring lives worth telling.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• The Foreigner
• We Shall Overcome
• Wake the Dead
• Blasphemy
• Nieto
• Tompkins Square
• Steal Away
• Dead Friends
• Holy Word
• White Masks
• Wreckage
• The Radio
• God Bless America
• Mountain Top
• Heavenly
• Enchanted
• La Bodega
• The Crucified
• The Cross
• God
• Home
• The Trump Crusade
• The Stone
• Migrant Woman
• Genesis
• Signs
• Minutiae
• Long Road
• Storage
• State of the Union
• I.C.E.
• Morning
• My Foster Mother
• Grand Child
• Come Sunday
• The Knock
• The Odor
• The Scraps
• Morning
• Another
• The Fire Hydrant
• The City
• Refugee
• Welcome
• Shots Fired
• Friday
• The Stone
• Simple
• Tell Me
• El Norte
• The Mission
• Good Friday
• The Visit
• Sunday
• The Chalice
• The Dream
• The Lunch Hour
• Impenitent
• Carry Us
• The Closing
• The Take Over
• The Knock
• Lock Up
• Look
• Graduation
• Animals
• Santa Fe Shooting
• Another Weeping
• The Speaking Tree
• The Cure
• The Subway Ride
• A Clear Day
• New World
• The Table
• The Wreckage
• Waiting
• The Wait
• The Veteran
• Simple Matters
• Loisaida
• Criminalized
• Awake
• Thorns
• Mother Tongue
• The Age to Come
• Lost Boys
• Flowers
• Shorty
• Jailed
• We, the People
• The Neighbors
• The Party
• The Last Days
• The Hospital
• Taking in the Light
• The Border
• In My Skin
• Kin
• Betrayal
• Bread
• The Candle
• The Line
• No Road
• The March
• Grace
• The Toddlers
• Heavenly
• Hell
• The Water
• They Cross the Border
• Lies
• Night
• Harmony
• Word
• Wickedness
• Bus Stop
• The Island
• The Stroll
• Cage
• Earthly Dust
• Posterity
• Alphabet City
• Rain
• Last Breath
• Dreamer
• Rehab
• Faile Street
• Esther
• Kneel
• The Nightmare
• Deported
• Apartment
• Labor Day
• The Forgotten
• Public School
• The Clocks
• The Fire
• The Judge
• Sophia
• Heresy
• Lord
• Sacrilege
• The Caravan
• The Nationalist
• American Pie
• Pragmatism
• The Sale