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The More Extravagant Feast: Poems
* One of the Boston Globe's Best Books of 2020 *
Winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, selected by Li-Young Lee
The More Extravagant Feast focuses on the trophic exchanges of a human body with the world via pregnancy, motherhood, and interconnection—the acts of making and sustaining other bodies from one’s own, and one’s own from the larger world. Leah Naomi Green writes from attentiveness to the vast availability and capacity of the weedy, fecund earth and from her own human place within more-than-human life, death, and birth. Lyrically and spiritually rich, striving toward honesty and understanding, The More Extravagant Feast is an extraordinary book of awareness of our dependency on ecological systems—seen and unseen.
Winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, selected by Li-Young Lee
The More Extravagant Feast focuses on the trophic exchanges of a human body with the world via pregnancy, motherhood, and interconnection—the acts of making and sustaining other bodies from one’s own, and one’s own from the larger world. Leah Naomi Green writes from attentiveness to the vast availability and capacity of the weedy, fecund earth and from her own human place within more-than-human life, death, and birth. Lyrically and spiritually rich, striving toward honesty and understanding, The More Extravagant Feast is an extraordinary book of awareness of our dependency on ecological systems—seen and unseen.
- GenresPoetry
82 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 7, 2020
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138 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
June 18, 2020
What a nurturing collection of poems. Leah Naomi Green's THE MORE EXTRAVAGANT FEAST explores what it means to be born, live, and die. In other words, it asks the question, "What does it mean to exist?" and then answers it through Green's crisp imagery and tender insights. Many of her poems draw upon her experiences with motherhood, the environment, and life in rural Virginia, which give the collection an earthy, pastoral, spiritual presence. Sure, fans of Mary Oliver may enjoy Green's work, but Green's lyric style is different: eloquent and rich, yet simple and gentle. When you finish reading this book, you'll feel as though you've been sitting on a farmhouse fence, watching wildlife and domesticated animals alike, or at the edge of a stream, dangling your legs in the cool water for hours. Either way, your soul will thank you for feeding it so fully with poetry.
May 9, 2020
Green's poems remind me that the moon still goes through her phases and the trees leaf out in their season, that babies are conceived and born and raised in the deeper abiding of world despite what nastiness happens on the world stage.
November 20, 2021
Gorgeous poems about pregnancy, motherhood and nature.
December 10, 2019
Whenever things get to be too much, it’s good to read poetry. Zadie kept playing with this galley and so I read it to her while she sat on my lap today. These are poems about nature, motherhood, pregnancy, ritual, death, the life cycle. I’d love to know more about the environmental studies classes that the author teaches at Washington & Lee, a school that was in vogue with my high school classmates but felt like the polar opposite of my college choice. I’d love to hear what she thinks of it. Rambling thoughts on a day occupied with recovery and gratitude. No more hospitals for some time, please.
June 10, 2020
I loved this book. I picked it up thinking I would read just a few poems before bed and wasn’t able to put it down again until I finished. The pacing and placement of the poems is beautiful. There is a fantastic juxtaposition between the different stages of her pregnancy and other snapshots of her life with her children and her life experiences. The whole book struck me like a Mary Oliver book but without the sort of hippy blind holiness of nature attitude (please don’t get me wrong, I love Oliver). Anyways, please go read this book of exquisitely beautiful and personal poems.
May 6, 2020
What beautiful, lyrical poems! I only meant to read a few poems when the book first arrived, and ended up sitting down and reading the whole book, cover to cover. Pregnancy, Earth, science, the mysteries of love; this book has everything I need right now. I look forward to reading it again and again. Highly, highly recommend!
April 22, 2020
Simply, I love this book. To read my interview with Leah Naomi Green for Puerto del Sol, visit: https://www.puertodelsol.org/single-p....
June 9, 2020
With eloquent simplicity and an eye for the telling detail, Leah Naomi Green writes poetry that encompasses nature and the very personal into a lyric tapestry. The growth of her daughters in her body and then--after they are born--outside that body.
"This is the way we came
to remember the world."
The likening of a wood stove being opened on the first cold day of Autumn and finding they had prepared wood to burn with the opening of her body in a C-section to the separate life of her daughter.
"i believed
at least one of us
must know the way"
The father who kills and dresses a deer for them to eat as a sacramental act.
"It is all I see,
a thing, alive, slowdown becoming my body."
"When we eat,
what we eat is the body
of the world"
The death of her father and faith in life as a candle of flickering light embodied in wax
"whose job is not to spark,
or hold a flame, but to keep the lit wick steady,
constant and disappearing."
A moving, personal, yet universal collection.
"This is the way we came
to remember the world."
The likening of a wood stove being opened on the first cold day of Autumn and finding they had prepared wood to burn with the opening of her body in a C-section to the separate life of her daughter.
"i believed
at least one of us
must know the way"
The father who kills and dresses a deer for them to eat as a sacramental act.
"It is all I see,
a thing, alive, slowdown becoming my body."
"When we eat,
what we eat is the body
of the world"
The death of her father and faith in life as a candle of flickering light embodied in wax
"whose job is not to spark,
or hold a flame, but to keep the lit wick steady,
constant and disappearing."
A moving, personal, yet universal collection.
June 13, 2020
This book landed in my mailbox courtesy of the American Academy of Poets. Green uses her writing to examine self as nature, nature as self, while exploring pregnancy, motherhood and a rural lifestyle. The author is an admirer of Walt Whitman and there are flavors of his poems in the book. Green is clearly attuned to her surroundings and her use of techniques reflects her ability to transform environmental observations into thought-provoking lines. I recommend her collection to anyone who is interested in viewing nature through an atypical lens.
July 27, 2021
2.75 stars
It's possible I just wasn't in the right mood for this collection, but it left me a bit cold, which is ironic considering that the poems are very much about being alive and bringing forth life. I think the biggest hurdle for me was the overarching presence of religious sentiment, which is just not my jam. But there were a few poems that really struck me, especially "Venison" and "Week Thirty-Four: Atomic." I can see this being a worthwhile collection to pick up if you're craving something grounding.
It's possible I just wasn't in the right mood for this collection, but it left me a bit cold, which is ironic considering that the poems are very much about being alive and bringing forth life. I think the biggest hurdle for me was the overarching presence of religious sentiment, which is just not my jam. But there were a few poems that really struck me, especially "Venison" and "Week Thirty-Four: Atomic." I can see this being a worthwhile collection to pick up if you're craving something grounding.
April 24, 2020
Green's poems of pregnancy, farming and ritual are infused with the natural world. Evocative and accessible, these poems pay attention to the table, the garden, the families we make. Winner of the Walt Whitman Award.
Favorite line from In Cleaning:
...
and which I did not wake you for,
wanting all the aspens,
all the golden, quaking aspens, and their silence
for myself.
Favorite line from In Cleaning:
...
and which I did not wake you for,
wanting all the aspens,
all the golden, quaking aspens, and their silence
for myself.
August 24, 2021
I found myself drawn to quiet in these poem. I love the subtle turnings. The actual lack of drama. She’s doing something really different than I’ve been seeing lately (and maybe for some time). And of course, that’s always a curiosity to me. I will certainly come back to this collection when I am yearning for a gentler kind of poem. And I hope I remember to examine how she uses the moon.
May 7, 2020
Good, not great. Moments of clear-eyed observation of life and nature, but seemingly no perception of the cause of wonder behind them. Kind of intriguing to me that Li Young Li chose this book for a recent award. The difference in depth between his poetry and Green's is noticeable.
September 25, 2020
A really smart collection of poems that relates pregnancy and motherhood to nature and science. If you like Mary Oliver you'd probably also enjoy this one. Every poem ended on a poignant note that made me stop and think. Really lovely.
January 29, 2025
3.5/5 I read this pretty spaced out so I didn't digest the collection like I probably should have, but I still really liked it. I liked how cohesive the theme of the collection is. There was a good balance of abstract and easier to understand poems. Her style really flows.
June 30, 2020
A magical journey, & that's coming from someone who is not all that into poetry.
October 12, 2020
Sweet, lush.
September 8, 2023
A collection of poems about motherhood, family, pregnancy, nature, and life.
from Venison: "I watch my husband undress her / with a knife. I wash the blue plates. / When I turn the water off, I can hear / his blade unmoor muscle, sail / through her fascia. // We put her leg and buttock / on the wooden table, where we / will gather her between us / to eat all year. It is all I see: / a thing, alive, slowly becoming my own body."
from Night Weaning: "She wakes / thirsty, and I / am an ocean / swelling to break / the shore."
from Engagement: "I have been throwing away the possibility / that I will be married to you // (I am engaged to be married to you). / I am throwing it away again // and when it lunges back, / away again, // because I believe I can mow a meadow / between me and my need, my need // and your fear."
from Venison: "I watch my husband undress her / with a knife. I wash the blue plates. / When I turn the water off, I can hear / his blade unmoor muscle, sail / through her fascia. // We put her leg and buttock / on the wooden table, where we / will gather her between us / to eat all year. It is all I see: / a thing, alive, slowly becoming my own body."
from Night Weaning: "She wakes / thirsty, and I / am an ocean / swelling to break / the shore."
from Engagement: "I have been throwing away the possibility / that I will be married to you // (I am engaged to be married to you). / I am throwing it away again // and when it lunges back, / away again, // because I believe I can mow a meadow / between me and my need, my need // and your fear."
May 24, 2021
I loved this poetry collection. It focuses on imagery of growth—gardens, animals, and babies. It was a perfect spring read.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews