Fruitlands

by Kate Colby

Poetry. FRUITLANDS is the probing, intelligent debut collection of poems from this Bay Area poet. "Taking its title from the transcendentalist utopian community founded by Bronson Alcott, FRUITLANDS offers its own visionary perspective on contemporary life. In this collection, cultural work is social innovation, and Kate Colby produces and decomposes identity, history, and narrative through fully engaged aesthetic practice....Colby maps out exciting possibilities for poetry and other spaces of representation in this stunning debut"--Paul Foster Johnson. "Under pressure, under duress, being a creature of habit caught in the sudden glare of utopic wishfulness, one wakes up in Fruitlands, smuggled inside Colby's intriguing and recombinant language of surveillance, pulled into suggested routes of survival and eco-linguistic liberties in a century you suddenly desire"--Kathleen Fraser.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Frank Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent; it gives a great picture of the Alcott family; the author has some bite in his writing style; tells a lot about Louisa May as a child; allows you to understand Transcendentalism more than you did; the emphasis on diet is interesting

[Darby Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this wonderful book over & over, brings new visions everytime.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have no idea about this book. Having forced myself thru lines like "concentric desire outspreads / her strained connectives" to get to more interesting poems like False Spring and Untitled Triptych - I just don't know. Colby is obviously talented but maybe a little overpolished and sneaky. Never got a sense of revelation with this stuff. The title poem "Toward Fruitlands" might have been put at the beginning of the book - for some reason I wish I'd read this poem before some of the others.