Not Now Now by Sandra Doller
Not Now Now
by Sandra Doller
Rescue Press
October, 2025
NOT NOW NOW by Sandra Doller, forthcoming from Rescue Press this October, is a “syntactically knotty” full-length poetry collection that “underscore Doller's continued assertion of wonder as ethos amid chaos.”
I had the privilege of getting to review this book early, and its fascinating syntax and repetition choices, musical rhythms, and how the past/present/future & self/collective are all topsy-turvied through wordplay have stayed with me! Every word is a surprise in this book, never letting the reader be certain if its construction will be subverted or not. This line from the first “NOW” section sums up the syntactical flummoxing perfectly to me: “You think I’m talking about it when I’m talking all around it.”
The push-and-pull between what is/isn’t/should be/shouldn’t’ve is pervasive across subjects in this collection. The roles of children & parents, women & men, writers, political citizens, time, and even indoors & outdoors are all in tension. One such passage in the “NOT” section highlights the speaker’s tension as a writer in a world of technical vs stylistic expectations, but also the tension of self vs collective (and that versus feels very tangible throughout) central to the book:
“You can’t break a thing
like that they say you can’t
stop on A or THE you can’t say
UM or ellipses or exclamation
forbid once in your life please
stop using them and sign in as
Guest only I could go on and in
I could go for it in prose but I
But I but I don’t like saying I
so much I like a thing more
central less centric […]”
Similarly exemplifying these contrasts as well as emphasizing the collection’s title, in the first “NOW” section: “Who am I asking all these questions of, my mother? I am the mother now and have to come up with answers like the way one letter from the word “now” to “not” changes everything: your breakfast is now ready, your breakfast is not ready. Why don’t we speak typos. At the level of the letter. It’s when I saw my hand holding the baby’s head I realized I wasn’t the baby anymore.” The switch to prose structure in this section after resisting it in the previous, verse-heavy “NOT” section, while still processing the same themes and self-laid traps, offers an interesting perspective on things that stay the same despite and/or because of change. This section focuses more on letting in prose, letting in self-centric thought, letting go of control a little more. Instead of staunch, only-the-extreme-ends-of-spectrum takes, the reader follows the speaker’s growth into more nuanced, empathetically considered takes. While this could read as the speaker “maturing” over time, I find it to be something more intimate and messily human like “taste-testing self-acceptance.”
That sense of growing security becomes more solid as the next “NOW” section opens, returning to verse forms but with less urgency, a more prose-like in its syntax, and feeling more assured in the line-level experimentations they do utilize. The subject of the poems is more external again, though with more subtle existence of the speaker’s gaze rather than the outright eyes the “NOT” section sees through. The poetry’s tone carries finality as it speaks in the present rather than about the present. Its stance, which also feels true of the whole book, is captured by this line from the section:
“I took a hammer to
that idea and moved
in closer.”
Overall, NOT NOW NOW can be a slow read to get through, despite the often speeding rhythm of the writing, because of how many times your brain tries to fill in its expectations for a sentence before your eyes prove otherwise or not. However, patience rewards the reader with this collection — by taking more time to consider the overarching associations woven throughout in cut-up bits of time and debate, the better your understanding and appreciation is of the depths of identity Doller interrogates and intensity of intention she does so with.
Not Now Now releases this October from Rescue Press! Learn more about the collection and pre-order your copy here: https://rescuepress.co/books/p/not-now-now
Thank you Rescue Press for the complimentary ARC of this title! I appreciate the early opportunity to read Sandra’s work and can’t wait to see it out in the world. :)
— Kylie