PALH BOOK REVIEWS

Dragonfly by Vince Gotera 1994; 44 pp.; Pa; Pecan Grove Press, St. Mary's Univ., One Camino Santa Maria, San Antonio, TX 78228-8608. $6.00. Small Press Review, November 1995. Copyright © 1995 Dustbooks by Will Hochman

Soul Surgery

Dragonfly is a collection of poems
that feels like a scalpel—in the
book's cultural wingspan, Vince
Gotera flies through Vietnam, rock
and roll, terrorism and art with a
voice that is iconoclastic, steely and
real. The craft and energy in Got-
era's best poems is very much like
that of the book's single longest line:
"sparks fly as they fuck, like the
struck flint, the flames of synaptic
junctions." Gotera does more than
get under the reader's skin—he
becomes the nervous system. He's
hard and tough and worth the pain
—listen to how he ends "Tunnel
Rat":

     Always another tunnel. But you know I'll

     always go down. The dark hush, the cool
     air on the back of my neck. I love the tunnel,

     the solid weight in my clenched hand of pure steel.
     There it is: the solace of pure fucking steel.

Though Dragonfly flutters with
fine cultural moments and lively
voices, some of the poems fall short
of their mark. I think Gotera's
readers will learn to accept and
forgive the occasional failed poem
and some of his clunkier lines.
Most of the poet's risks pay off.
Gotera's alternating senses of alien-
ation and connection create imagery
that manages to see behind the
image and through both poet and
reader. Here is a poet who forces
open our souls.
 

 

 

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