Winner of the 2021 Michael Waters Poetry PrizeGrappling with both motherhood and the death of a mother, Blueprint and Ruin explores the juxtaposition of prosperity and loss. Filled with cultural specters manifested in structural ruin—houses built on snake dens, malls with foundations in old landfills, a picture-perfect town designed to be eradicated in nuclear testing—the poems mine what’s buried beneath the façade of the American West.