The More Extravagant Feast by Leah Naomi Green (GrayWolf Press) – Reviewed by Vikki C.

I first encountered Leah Naomi Green’s The More Extravagant Feast during the pandemic years, a time of disorder, vulnerability and moral questioning regarding global systems and our place on Earth. 

Selected by Li-Young Lee as winner of The Walt Whitman Award, the collection felt then like a book of prayer. One written to those in isolation, for its deep empathy and appreciation of the trophic exchanges and interconnectivity of the human body with the natural world. 

I find myself continually returning to these lyrical poems crafted with great attention to the expansiveness of language as bearer of life, death and epiphany. Leah Naomi Green takes us to the wellspring of human rituals, where themes of motherhood, childbearing and marriage segue into a wider study of the more-than-human interior. 

The poet draws on experiences of self-sufficiency and fertility to harvest an awareness of the ecological blueprint and our interdependency with the bodies that surround. One that reconciles the visual palette of everyday wanderings with an enriching spiritual realm. 

I admired her skilful blurring of lines where the reader becomes the (inquisitive) child, who in turn, enacts a voice of multitudes:

“Every moment of this is true

though nobody knows the next word.

And my daughter, nearly

a person, almost a story,

is full of comprehension.” 

All the while, our conscience is the subject turning inside the poet’s meticulous eye. It is here we feel the pulse of existence at work. There is pain in every blessing and these poems carry this complex binding with intuition and a long lasting reverence. 

The More Extravagant Feast is published by GrayWolf Press and is available on Amazon.