Warrior-Poet of the Fifth Sun

The good offices of Aztecpoet.com were kind enough to send me via internet Luis A. López recent book titled Warrior-Poet of the Fifth Sun, innercircle publishing 2004.

I must confess that if poetry has the quality to speak to the soul, Luis’s book not speaks but guides the path to be taken. This is Xicano poetry at its best and represents many of the spiritual dilemmas that we Xicana/os and Chicana/os battle within us in the everyday identity war field. His poetry soothes and describes in detail our inner spiritual wars; the conflict we have in dealing with our Spanish heritage; the loathing we have at times towards catholic dogma and the religious battle within ourselves to either believe the Christian God or our ancestors Gods, Quetzocóatl. There is also the fine fine tradition that stems all the way to Lope de Vega’s El Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias en Este Tiempo whereby Lope de Vega urged his countrymen to speak to them in their language. So does Lopez, and not only does he gives praise to other poets, he speaks to the universal in Spanglish. For let us not forget, and Lopez does not allow us to do it, spanglish is the language of our brethren from other parts of the latino world, the lingua franca amongst us latino who are bilingual and connects us to the Cuban, the puertorican, the Columbian. There is a profound sense of wanting to reach what Plotinus calls Beauty and the One. He reminds us of our nation Aztlán and speaks for the voiceless ones who cannot speak to monolingual America. He paints for us the streets as they are, were rutine meets the spirit of Hermes in those of us who need to detail what we see to others, yes Luis, you are meant to be a writer, and we can thank Quetzocóatl for that carnal.