“If you believe that sky and skin, that earth and hair, that flesh and tree bark, that the rustle of pines and a moan of pleasure — are so inherently the same … then you need Claudia F. Savage’s rending, nourishing, dazzling collection [Bruising Continents] in your life. In your bed. Ringing through your bones.”

—Katharine Coldiron, ANMLY

Claudia Saleeby Savage’s poems in first you must destroy the world (First Matter Press) do not keep time with Eros despite Ares, rather as anti-weapon, as a frequent condition of life, as one means “to bring up the water of the other.” Tears, here, are for loss of life, memory, and connection, for Syria, for touch that could be sensual but is instead brutal. This collection grips that tension in remarkable lines of musicality and invention, frank desire, with imagery that stuns and dazzles.   

—Douglas Kearney, author of | Imagine | Been Science Fiction Always, Sho, and Optic Subwoof