Fruition is a poem about seeking fulfilment while acknowledging the constraints that govern our lives. As with much of my work, this piece uses the mundane as a point of entry into the philosophical.

The speaker references Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “The American Scholar,” in which Emerson criticises the human need to name and order the word, expounding a return to a more natural state in which the world is experienced without a need to control it. The speaker then juxtaposes this view against Goethe’s philosophies, whose book Faustus questions the sustainability, not to mention ethics, of our desire to experience more and more, and more.

Solace is found in the historical figure of Linnaeus, inventor of the binomial system of naming—who categorised the world while living “a categorically unstortable life.”

Originally published in The Acentos Review.

Ana María Caballero (b.1981) is an award-winning, multidisciplinary literary artist. Her work explores how biology delimits societal and cultural rites, ripping the veil from romanticised motherhood and questioning notions that package sacrifice as a virtue. She’s the recipient of the Beverly International Prize, Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize, the Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize, a Future Art Writers Award and a Sevens Foundation Grant. In 2024, she became the first living poet to sell a poem at Sotheby’s. Recognised as a digital poetry pioneer, her work has been nominated for a MAXXI BVLGARI Prize in the Digital Sector, shortlisted for a Lumen Prize, been a finalist for both the Vassar Miller and Academy of American Poetry Prizes and exhibited in museums, galleries and public spaces worldwide.