Recinos' love for poetry dates back to being raised on the tormented streets of the South Bronx and the experience of being abandoned by Latino parents at age twelve. On the streets, Recinos discovered a world of extreme poverty and drugs, until four years later he was taken in by a White Presbyterian minister and guided back into school. When in graduate school in New York City, he befriended Nuyorican poets Miguel Pinero and Pedro Pietri, who encouraged him to write and read poetry at the Nuyorican poets cafe. Recinos' poetry makes a connection between the poetic imagination, social criticism, and the meaning of life together in a diverse society. No Room is poetry that creates a fusion between the personal and the public in verse that is searching, expansive, and walking hurt streets. In this collection, Recinos encourages readers to use their imagination to live into invisible publics and to pause in the places where the voiceless speak. No Room offers images, feelings, and stories that crack dividing walls of hostility and nativist prohibitions and capture the full complexity of life experienced from the barrio to the American public square.
