“Breath and Distance” takes place across America, particularly the less privileged regions: “abandoned factories where prosperity died quiet deaths[, t]he country's failures written in every closed storefront” (Lines 19-20). The poem unites some of the hardships the country has faced in the past (and is still facing today) with its distinctive sprawl and the romanticism of the “American dream”. The setting then becomes a macrocosm of the man’s life, and the lives of others like him.