To use her own words, Kate Colby’s poetry 'cannibalizes' and 'interbreeds' with itself, with the author’s life, and with the work and life of Jane Bowles, the great 20th century fiction writer and playwright. This booklength poem creates its own trajectory—a set of rapid explosions which transform into caresses. Colby’s harmonics—graceful, melodic, fluid and dissonant by turn—work in counterpoint to the relentless flow of fragments and blurs. Unbecoming Behavior is hyper-active to the extreme, and a step onwards.

Nomadism, childhood, travel, home, and Jane Bowles’ life and work walk on, around and star in this gorgeous staging ground of language complete with 'fricative fronds.' Want hot pursuit of meaning? Jane is constant in flight and anchor through Colby's bold, acrobatic word play, where one line surprises another. Syntactic gymnastics name the Jane. Jim Thompson makes a cameo stroke. Thank the gods! If you have a diamond ring, go pawn it for all of Ugly Duckling Presse’s editions and especially Kate Colby's Unbecoming Behavior that dares to say on the page what no one would speak.

Kate Colby has a gift for blending observation with lyric energy and wit.