The Slow Subtraction: A.L.S.

Ive never read anything remotely like The Slow Subtraction: A.L.S. Joseph Powells deeply loving collection that tracks how it is to lose the beloved one day at a time. These profoundly beautiful poems broach the place that Emily Dickinson called internal difference / Where the meanings are. Honesty is a difficult art; you will feel its powers grieve and restore you over and over. Nancy Eimers author of Oz The Slow Subtraction is a stunning heartbreaking collection made more poignant for Powells trenchant eye on the devastations caused by A.L.S on his late wife the poet Judith Kleck. This chronology of subtractions to the staircase / of her brain and the ravages of a bodys gradual dying create a luminous elegy. The opulence in the skins sweet torment might feel like all the back doors opened into coffins of alley light but there is grace here enlarging the sway of events /the way pettiness is candleflicker against the passing night. Adrianne Kalfopoulou author of The History of Too Much