Breaking ground

Abstract

'Breaking Ground' is a collection of poems that follows a narrative arc as the speaker transitions from youth to adulthood. Set in the farmlands of Wisconsin, the manuscript examines numerous relationships: between men and women, children and parents, people and the land, and native and non-native inhabitants of the land. The manuscript addresses the idea of displacement: what it means to belong somewhere, to call someplace home, and what results when that home must be left behind or returned to. This idea is examined through poems about native culture, poems about divorce and the dissolution of a family, as well as poems about how a father dealt with the trauma of returning from Vietnam. Overall, the manuscript is a story of both a family and a region, and how those apparently separate entities-people and place-are intrinsically linked.