The scope of the poets in this collection is as broad as the landscape itself. Some poets are descended from indigenous inhabitants of the High Plains. Others are descendants of those who immigrated here, from Germany, Russia, or the Scandinavian countries in the nineteenth century, or more recently from other parts of the country and world. They write about the historical struggles of settlement and assimilation, and more contemporary versions of those struggles in the Bakken oil patch in the western part of the state. Some write about North Dakota from the rural settings they have known and the distant vantages of nostalgia or escape, and still others from the point of view of transplants coming to terms with their new home. The poets here include seasoned and emerging voices, women and men, old and young, those from the ranching and oil-flared badlands west of the Missouri, and from the flood-prone river valley farmlands of the east.