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You Cannot Save Here
Winner of the 2022 Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from the Washington Writers' Publishing House, You Cannot Save Here is a collection of poems about how we live when each day feels like the world is ending. The poems ask what we do with the small moments that matter when so much around us—climate disaster, gun violence, pandemics, wars—makes these days feel apocalyptic. The book is a bit speculative and a bit confessional. It's queer, punk, and woven tightly with cultural allusion—from visual art to video games, pop culture to counterculture.
- GenresPoetry
84 pages, Paperback
Published September 27, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 22, 2022
“Learn to love your ugly / lack of utility”
I love how Moll can fill me with rage & joy as a reader all at once. Go get their book, YOU CANNOT SAVE HERE, immediately, & start with marveling at the beautiful cover by Andrew Klein that prepares you for the poem-calamity-perfection to come.
“Be honest with colleagues / about the terror blotting you out”
They can turn a phrase so quickly, mix high and low with grace. This is the poetry I want to take into the apocalypse with me.
I love how Moll can fill me with rage & joy as a reader all at once. Go get their book, YOU CANNOT SAVE HERE, immediately, & start with marveling at the beautiful cover by Andrew Klein that prepares you for the poem-calamity-perfection to come.
“Be honest with colleagues / about the terror blotting you out”
They can turn a phrase so quickly, mix high and low with grace. This is the poetry I want to take into the apocalypse with me.
December 1, 2022
Anthony Moll's collection of poetry "You Cannot Save Here" serves as a great example of how to find moments of bliss within an otherwise dour reality that we all live in. They take us on a journey in which they show us a series of contemplations of humanity and what our role is in the ushering in of our apocalyptic future. As Moll writes, we are shown that this apocalyptic future (or "The End" as it is continually referred to) is not one of brimstone and hail; rather, it is small scale. In one of the many eponymous poems (this time on pages 47-49), it is shown that "The End" is the things that are happening continually that affect us and those around us:
vi. the truth is The End happens
all the time, every day
a diagnosis, an eviction
a bullet, a bullet, a bullet
Another poem to highlight is "To the Parents of Hitachi Snake Robot" on page 15, which I found to be one of the most emotionally impactful of the collection, especially with the hard-hitting final couplet: "A statesman writes a letter to the parents / of fallen drones It is with great sorrow that..." The emotional forces of this poem shows undoubtedly of Moll’s passion and skill for poetry, but the sentiments that they are able to craft for the reader is shown throughout all of the poetry included in this collection. Even listing a few excerpts would not do this justice, and the strong imagery and rawness of this book need to be admired in all its intention.
As such, I wholly recommend those interested in proudly queer, lively, realistic-yet-hopeful poetry to pick up this collection.
vi. the truth is The End happens
all the time, every day
a diagnosis, an eviction
a bullet, a bullet, a bullet
Another poem to highlight is "To the Parents of Hitachi Snake Robot" on page 15, which I found to be one of the most emotionally impactful of the collection, especially with the hard-hitting final couplet: "A statesman writes a letter to the parents / of fallen drones It is with great sorrow that..." The emotional forces of this poem shows undoubtedly of Moll’s passion and skill for poetry, but the sentiments that they are able to craft for the reader is shown throughout all of the poetry included in this collection. Even listing a few excerpts would not do this justice, and the strong imagery and rawness of this book need to be admired in all its intention.
As such, I wholly recommend those interested in proudly queer, lively, realistic-yet-hopeful poetry to pick up this collection.
December 6, 2022
If you’ve ever felt like the world was ending and you were just here to watch it all end, you’ve likely felt like Anthony Moll. In Anthony’s poetry collection “YOU CANNOT SAVE HERE,” readers are whisked away to the apocalyptic, disastrous, violent, uncaring world of… well, real life, it seems! Through beautifully woven narratives of queer life, post-internet interaction, and the very-modern cultural drowning many of us feel, Moll manages to capture the real anxieties of most people quite accurately.
A few things were clearly in mind for Moll while they wrote “YCSH.” The foremost concern is the seeming end-of-all-things. The collection is interwoven with disparate but connected poems like most collections are, but also with a continuous poem that laces the pieces together, eponymously named “YOU CANNOT SAVE HERE,” sometimes subtitled for effect. Moll uses these eponymous poems to speak directly upon feelings about the coming apocalypse. As many of us felt during the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine process, and through the political division of our recent years, and the increasing amount of violence in the world, Moll writes on anxieties for, fears for, dread for, and even cravings for the end. My favorite of these eponymous poems reads:
My favorite apocalypse
starts with an orphan planet
starts with a wedding
starts with a star somewhere
south of where it should be
Many of these eponymous poems repeat the sentiment “my favorite apocalypse,” as if to beg for a more exciting, more romantic, or more interesting apocalypse than the one the speaker feels like they’re experiencing now. However, the non-eponymous poems rope together the thematic weave just as well. Every poem in the collection speaks to an apocalypse of some kind, whether that is the literal feeling of worlds-ending, or the smaller apocalypses, like conventions being destroyed or expectations dropped. I particularly enjoy Moll writing on the subject of Cosmos, in their poem “AFTER STAR STUFF,” where he pens, “Praise be Saint Sagan / for the explosion that killed figurative language” implying that since we are all comprised of recycled matter from the Big Bang, Carl Sagan made figurative language literal by explaining that to us. An apocalypse of a small degree, and yet, a Universe-altering one as well. In the poem “POLY BEACH HOUSE,” Moll writes on the craving feeling I described earlier, rather than a fear for an end. The poem reads:
After a swim
I carve ἔσχατος in the sand, and my body
wishes I had the time to cover up my bad
tattoos—O apocalypse, we just want
a summer. When wasn’t The End
hiding behind the sun?
Overall, “YOU CANNOT SAVE HERE” scratches a lot of the anxious itches I have as a poetry reader. Too often I feel as if poets do not live in the present, and are separated from modern anxieties by a veil of incredulity and pretentious over-intellectualism. However, considering the attention to anxieties most of us have felt in the last few years, added with references to in-touch modern cultural fixtures and a clinging to the zeitgeist, it is obvious that Anthony Moll has hit the nail on the head.
A few things were clearly in mind for Moll while they wrote “YCSH.” The foremost concern is the seeming end-of-all-things. The collection is interwoven with disparate but connected poems like most collections are, but also with a continuous poem that laces the pieces together, eponymously named “YOU CANNOT SAVE HERE,” sometimes subtitled for effect. Moll uses these eponymous poems to speak directly upon feelings about the coming apocalypse. As many of us felt during the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine process, and through the political division of our recent years, and the increasing amount of violence in the world, Moll writes on anxieties for, fears for, dread for, and even cravings for the end. My favorite of these eponymous poems reads:
My favorite apocalypse
starts with an orphan planet
starts with a wedding
starts with a star somewhere
south of where it should be
Many of these eponymous poems repeat the sentiment “my favorite apocalypse,” as if to beg for a more exciting, more romantic, or more interesting apocalypse than the one the speaker feels like they’re experiencing now. However, the non-eponymous poems rope together the thematic weave just as well. Every poem in the collection speaks to an apocalypse of some kind, whether that is the literal feeling of worlds-ending, or the smaller apocalypses, like conventions being destroyed or expectations dropped. I particularly enjoy Moll writing on the subject of Cosmos, in their poem “AFTER STAR STUFF,” where he pens, “Praise be Saint Sagan / for the explosion that killed figurative language” implying that since we are all comprised of recycled matter from the Big Bang, Carl Sagan made figurative language literal by explaining that to us. An apocalypse of a small degree, and yet, a Universe-altering one as well. In the poem “POLY BEACH HOUSE,” Moll writes on the craving feeling I described earlier, rather than a fear for an end. The poem reads:
After a swim
I carve ἔσχατος in the sand, and my body
wishes I had the time to cover up my bad
tattoos—O apocalypse, we just want
a summer. When wasn’t The End
hiding behind the sun?
Overall, “YOU CANNOT SAVE HERE” scratches a lot of the anxious itches I have as a poetry reader. Too often I feel as if poets do not live in the present, and are separated from modern anxieties by a veil of incredulity and pretentious over-intellectualism. However, considering the attention to anxieties most of us have felt in the last few years, added with references to in-touch modern cultural fixtures and a clinging to the zeitgeist, it is obvious that Anthony Moll has hit the nail on the head.
September 16, 2023
A collection of poems about the end of times, queerness, love, acceptance, the pandemic, hope, and heartbreak.
from Fruit of the Unenclosed Land: "I don't know much about the acorn, but if I am to be a body, I wanna be a whole / oak enveloped in kind potential. I no longer want to be the sort who shotguns / the wolf because she shows her teeth."
from You Cannot Save Here: "My favorite apocalypse / is a song about breaking up // bc sure, the shore is arriving / soon, and we haven't even started // tidying up yet, and yes, men / are gathering with American // flag vinyl wraps on their rifles / yes, a plague, yes, a mob // yes, yet there are still young lovers"
from Fruit of the Unenclosed Land: "I don't know much about the acorn, but if I am to be a body, I wanna be a whole / oak enveloped in kind potential. I no longer want to be the sort who shotguns / the wolf because she shows her teeth."
from You Cannot Save Here: "My favorite apocalypse / is a song about breaking up // bc sure, the shore is arriving / soon, and we haven't even started // tidying up yet, and yes, men / are gathering with American // flag vinyl wraps on their rifles / yes, a plague, yes, a mob // yes, yet there are still young lovers"
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews