AGRICOL LOZANO is a throwback. He belongs to another era - the era when judges were jailing the Pratt brothers for their principles and Eliza R. Snow penned fervent anthems to her LDS faith.
Lozano, the president of the Mexico City Temple, would fit right in with them. His defense of basic freedoms once got him imprisoned by the government. And at a time when so much modern LDS verse seems as polished and serene as the surface of Lake Powell, Lozano is all white water. His poems thunder on for pages like 19th-century visions. Reading a Lozano poem is to ride an unbroken stallion."I write in gulps," he says. "On airplanes, on buses. The poems come all at once."
Born into a Mormon family in Tula, Mexico, Lozano has always come at life "a todo dar" (all out). As a young lawyer and legal firebrand, his public defense of human rights and freedoms got the Mexican government grumbling.
"They arrested me and held me prisoner for 30 days," Lozano explains today. "A group of students finally got me released."
While under arrest, he read and he wrote.
That's what frontier Mormons do.
After his release Lozano worked more cautiously, though never with less passion. His energetic personality and fierce devotion to the faith have generated a good deal of Mexican Mormon folklore.
"When I was in Argentina I was known as `President Panzer,' after the German tank," Lozano says with a smile. "I've had many nicknames."
Some may wish to add one more: the Mormon Walt Whitman.
As a poet, Lozano writes large and long. His themes are grand, as the titles of his poems show: "Vida" (Life), "Arrepientete y Perdona" (Repent and Forgive), "Yo Soy" (I Am).
"Yo Soy" is a single-spaced poem in two parts that runs to five typed pages. As a "Whitman sampler," here is a frangment from Part II. (Forgive my translation.)
I AM
My forebearers
fashioned religion from dance and song
they made poetry
from spears and feathers
from flowers and water,
from birds and moons,
from suns and stars
from sunups and sundowns
from hills and winds
from men and children
from maize fields and fires.
My heraldry
is to be a brother in the brotherhood of man.
Like the mountain range
I am vertical and vast,
as reliable as the winter there,
freeing its eternal snows to ride
the ridges, slopes and cliffs.
I offer my word of honor
and I comply.
I am like the mountain range,
gathering a thousand geometric figures
in my tattered clothes:
groves,
wings,
alpine forests
the nests of condors.
This is what I am.
Or, in truth,
what I long to be. . . .
Today Agricol Lozano lives in Mexico City with his wife, Rosamalinche. They have six children - two sons and four daughters.
When asked for a comment about the poet/temple president, Lozano's personal secretary - Juan Roberto Garcia Montiel - didn't hesitate a beat before answering:
"He is a learned man; a humble and responsible man. When he writes, the spirit moves him. And I am moved by the spirit when I read him."