Advanced Subtraction

Advanced Subtractionis the perfect title for Elizabeth Kandall’s impassioned poetry. These poems weigh life’s value, the sum of our passion, the worth we dare to take and sometimes give back. Maybe because “hunger can be such a wide and narrow place,” there’s such desire here for understanding, for tolerance, for refuge and commitment to ever more life itself. This is quite a trip she’s taking us on, all the way back to the beginning of innocence and desire. As she dares to say, “I can be eaten now, come devour me.” Yes, fasten your seatbelts, indeed. —Philip Schultz, author, Failureand Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry Every new arrival renews the world in Elizabeth Kandall’s attentive, considered, and well-made poems. These are poems which think about how we might close distances — of space, of time — and more closely consider one another. Kandall’s work looks for ways to be useful, to stitch together rather than suture the human connection. Worldly and yet open to surprise, and renewal, this is a book of complicated mathematics rendered with companionable generosity. —Declan Ryan, poet and critic, author, Crisis Actor Elizabeth Ryozen Kandall’s poems, rich with spiritual insight and personal reflection, are an expression of her spiritual practice. Each of the pieces draw the reader into a contemplative space where the sacred, and the everyday come together. Her words have a way of touching the heart-mind, inviting us to pause, reflect, and connect with the deeper currents of life. —Chodo Jikei Campbell, Sensei 澄道 慶悲 and Co-Founder, New York Zen Center