Nine Acres

Selected by Marie Howe from over one thousand submissions, Nine Acres is the winner of the American Poetry Review/APR Honickman First Book Prize. Taking their titles from chapters of a 1930s small-scale farming handbook, the fifty-two poems in this cycle create a handbook for living and explore sustainability on many levels--on the land, in the family, and in the spirit.

As Marie Howe writes in her introduction to the book, "Nathanial Perry has collected poems into this book as one plants a field, as an act of husbandry: each line a furrow where seeds flourish or fail. Husbandry--to create a dwelling place and to care for it--these are the ancient acts."

"Soil Surface Management"

I spent the afternoon breaking

ground. The tiller bucked and groaned

at the job, but with each pass I saw

a perfect blankness, like I'd been loaned

a second life in which to grow

a third. The sun sat on its porch

and smiled. I wondered if the dirt

would be enough, a kind of torch

to set inside our lives to say,

we'll grow our food like this, our plans

will look like this --like soil squared

and measured into beds by a man

sweating through his shirt with effort.

In dirt is one life we can choose

to make. I spent the afternoon

breaking what I knew we'd use.

Nathaniel Perry lives with his family in rural southside Virginia. He is the editor of the Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review and teaches at Hampden-Sydney College.