I remember learning about the concept of allusion in childhood, as a burgeoning nerd. Kids these days would grok it best as the Captain America “I understood that reference” meme, which itself is basically the very notion of metacommentary collapsing in on itself, and would honestly be an appropriate stand-alone review of this book.
Appropriate, but insufficient. Although Iowa Poet Laureate Vince Gotera’s collection of speculative poetry, Dragons & Rayguns (Final Thursday Press), is a panoply of allusions (and although I’d boldly state that I understood many of them), it is also in turns sincere, self-deprecating, thought-provoking and tender. It’s deeply immersive, drawing the reader deeper and deeper into the author’s scattershot, cross-section, pop culture world with every page.
The cover of the collection, credited to Gotera’s son Marty, is a delightful riff on Silver Age comics covers, setting up an expectation of nostalgia paired with possibility. “We just don’t imagine the future like we used to,” it seems to imply (I would agree). It also underscores the way in which the book acts as a crash course in speculative fiction, emphasizing how fantasy, science fiction and horror all serve to scratch the same itch inside our hearts.
One consistent thread woven throughout the poems (many of which were previously published elsewhere) is the voice of the creature: Poems like “Dragon Flight,” “Bakunawa the Sea Dragon Desires the Seven Moons in High Heaven” and many of the selections included in Scifaiku and Curious Candy Hearts give voice to gods and cryptids and horrors; “Xenobot Speaks” and “Warrior” personify scientific reactions and technologies. It’s a skillful use of the persistent way that speculative fiction subverts societal “othering” by insisting that humanity is not the sole purview of humans.
Gotera plays throughout with established poetic forms, using them as a bridge—between past and future, between tradition and conjecture, between mythology and exploration. He draws heavily on Filipino folklore and digs deeply into esoteric science facts, inviting the reader to dive into stories that may be less familiar to some. Every reference is a rabbit hole that rewards the curious; it’s a collection best read phone in hand, searching everything you don’t understand to open up worlds of delight.
Because of this, one apparent typo was more glaring than it might have been otherwise. In the beautifully dark poem “Horror Story,” the second word is spelled “manananngal” rather than manananggal (it is spelled correctly in the end notes). In a volume so dedicated to re-aligning the ideas, creatures and cultures that we typically center, this feels unfortunately careless, and it stands out in such a thoughtfully, gorgeously designed book.
It’s a small distraction, though, in a work filled with beauty. Concrete poems like “Space Opera” and “The Raygun’s Plea for Understanding” jump lightheartedly off the page. “Sestina: Dragon” is irreverent and playful in its train-of-thought meandering. And stanzas like this section from “Fantasia” will linger long after they are read, encouraging readers to return again and again:
Pearly lovebirds sing
Into periwinkle or indigo skies,
Delicate blue cantatas.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s December 2024 issue.
