The Feeder

by Jennifer Jackson Berry

The Feeder by Jennifer Jackson Berry is a book of the body—an unblinking eye, a voice kicking open door after door on hushed topics of infertility, pregnancy loss, and how real bodies, in all their failings and flailings, seek and find pleasure. The poems are as secrets shared between good friends, so raw and dangerous, we can’t look away.

"In The Feeder, Jennifer Jackson Berry gives us what we crave. In an authentic, incisive voice, she instructs: …don’t swat the wasp./ Let it happen. Let the bite happen. And the bite does happen in these slicing poems of the body in delight and distress—poems of the fat girl speaking, poems of infertility, of sex and more sex, of debilitating loss. Berry delivers what so many others only strive for: the devouring of what’s gone bad and the opening up of each remaining body to see it glisten."

—Jan Beatty

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2016

About the author

Jennifer Jackson Berry is the author of To Know Crush (YesYes Books, 2020) and The Feeder (YesYes Books, 2016). Her most recent chapbook Bloodfish was published by Seven Kitchens Press in 2019 as part of their Keystone Chapbook Series. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Reviews

[Timons Esaias · Rating 5 out of 5]

When this book first came into my hands, I observed online that, "All her poems are strong. It's quite annoying, really." Now that I've read it, the annoyance is so great that I'm violating my policy against giving star ratings to poets I know. This collection is simply exceptional, and respect must be paid.

Many of these poems address painful situations (loss of a pregnancy, infertility, struggling with obesity) but relentlessly refuse to draw a moral from the story. They refuse to resolve.

Another strong theme (which is dear to my heart) is wrestling with polite society's failure to recognize how humans actually work; what our needs and structures are, as opposed to ideal simplifications. Berry is constantly exposing the differences between expectations and truth.

There is also some joy in here, but the collection as a whole brings one word to mind: brave. All poets risk self-esteem when publishing, all poets risk exposure, and it is very common for confessional poets (in these days of confessional poetry) to armor themselves against the risk by being defiant in their voice, being in-your-face, being I-can-say-this-and-you-can't-you-turd. Berry seems not to do that, at all. Here, too, she refuses to resolve. She asks, "How did I fall today?" and leaves us with that.

I really can't pick favorites from this collection, but the solitary opening poem (the remainder are in groups) "I Lost Our Baby" is one that could be in any Best Poem collection for the next century or so. Its mode is one we use for playful poems, but the topic is tragedy.

Read this one, if you dare.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so refreshing. As I was reading and relating to it, it dawned on me that I've probably read thousands of poems about the body, but I can't think of a single poem about womanhood and the fat body--living in it, fearing it, wanting pleasure for it, wanting to marvel in its miracles and mourn its losses. I'm someone who has never been thin, and so reading this book spoke to the things that were, for some reason, unspeakable and unspoken. And it says something profound about our culture and womanhood that this topic has gone unheard. Kudos to Berry for confronting it with such honesty and courage.

[Delia Rainey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A heaping portion of poems that are hungry for food, sex, belonging, and family - the basics of human life. However, these basic needs are often taboo for poetry - insulin injections, feeding fetishes, sex between two fat bodies, and most of all, the days of mourning that follow a miscarriage. These poems give me permission to write about my darkest losses, my own clots of blood that have fallen, and carrying of fat and food, eating Jell-O cake in bed, hidden away. However, something felt a little missing at times - I was left hoping for bigger, greedier, messier poems, whereas some of these felt so trimmed down, clean.

[Danielle Hanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unflinching and powerful

[Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Swoon-worthy poems full of tension and beauty. I can't wait to reread them.

[Marne Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

My absolute favorite poem from this collection: Fat Girl Has Regular Sex