Poetry. Italian Studies. The poems in SEASON OF SUBTRACTION are at once effortlessly attainable, and at the same time surprisingly fresh and delightfully unexpected…If you listen carefully, you can hear Michelle say, Yes, you come too. SEASON OF SUBTRACTION is an extraordinary book.–John Stanizzi The prose poems that make up SEASON OF SUBTRACTION bask in the poetics of language and syntax; they are bricks paving a dream-village, both American and Old World…I am in awe of the space Michelle Messina Reale creates: its friction, its strength, its mournful insistence, and the speaker who ‘pin[s] my father’s heart to the wall and pray[s] a novena to lost souls…’–Jennifer Martelli

SEASON OF SUBTRACTION is like Sicily’s own citrus fruits–hybridized, yet native and emblematic; sweet and intricate, yet often bitter in places at the whim of life’s turning. With its nuanced language, crafted metaphors, and raw honesty, Reale’s work is a treat to be savored.–Chad Frame

In SEASON OF SUBTRACTION, Michelle Reale entangles you in the language of ache and need, and the search for a lost relative who becomes a found love…You will gather so many pieces in this beautiful collection, and you will exit it feeling whole, knowing what was once lost is now home.–Kailey Tedesco