"In a world that threatens our daily extinction, I race quicksilver to the ephemera made flesh in the sensoria dreamed by Juan Ramón Jiménez, Alfonso Reyes, Antonio Machado, Gabriela Mistral, Sor Juana, Ernesto Cardenal--and Harold Recinos. In his poems, imperious walls violently divide and tears of loss and unbelonging lacerate souls. Yet again this wordsmith extraordinaire jolts us back alive to the power of our life force: creativity, curiosity, and fellowship!" --Frederick Luis Aldama, Ohio State University "After Dark , while presented as a poetry collection, is better understood as liturgy. Open this book and let love lift you up and break your heart. Through his achingly beautiful words, Harold Recinos asks that his readers labor for justice to remake American society--a society that has failed to meet the basic human needs of too many of our Latino sisters and brothers, especially their precious children, our precious children." --Lori Marie Carlson, author of Cool Salsa, Red Hot Salsa and The Sunday Tertulia "Protest poetry is deliberate and unafraid in the capable hands of Harold Recinos. In this collection you will hear an authentic poet possessing a quintessential American voice that echoes with Langston, Piñero, and Angelou, all shouting, 'This is what you have killed, America!'" --Ernesto Quiñonez, Cornell University "Like Walt Whitman, who found 'letters of God dropt in the street,' Harold Recinos finds in the 'sacramental gutter' the reliquaries and names of the exiled, banished, and broken by a hostile, almost fatal country. From his side of the Jordan, he sings in a braided Spanish and English--sometimes with a white hand around his throat--of tortured brown bodies and a contested notion of 'home.

' He is a magus who recognizes and subverts the savage. He is a minister who attends to Bronx musicians, barrio residents, Breonna Taylor, and border crossers, delivering 'just the right amount of Spanish balm.' His is a blistering, prophetic song. He is unafraid, indefatigable, and necessary." --Bruce Smith, Syracuse University "With his own style of grammar and flow of language, with each poem Recinos steadily indicts America's racism and hypocrisy--reduces the lies of its political system and false prophets (more in it for the money and power than for God) to dust under the steady beat of the poems hammering on the anvil of his heart, his pain, his hope, his dreams--every kid in school should read this book. It's a must!" --Jimmy Santiago Baca, author of Laughing in the Light "After Dark is graced by an urgent, persistent, liberatory voice that at one moment dreams of reaching 'all the way / to God's ear' and at another condemns 'the monstrous nationalist / leaving the White House.' Similarly, the poems in this collection honor 'a worker / who sweats for a petty wage' as well as 'dark children chewing / on bitter bread' and 'perishing on / this wounded earth.' After Dark makes clear that Recinos is a poet who has been gifted with an endless fount of benevolence and is guided by a faith rooted in love, humanity, and compassion.

" --Jeffrey Lamar Coleman, St. Mary's College of Maryland.