Broken Pastoral

Abstract

Broken Pastoral is a collection whose speaker takes the reader across a rural, often described as idyllic, southern landscape juxtaposed with a violence that is, at times, necessary and always jarring, all while contemplating the materiality of the world around them. If the pastoral tradition in poetry idealizes rural landscapes, and all matter found within them, then this collection wishes to break that idealization, revealing an experience that is informed both by the speaker’s search for a metaphysics and how to grieve what’s lost without obsessing over grief.