Nine Acres

Selected by Marie Howe from over one thousand submissions, Nine Acresis 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 Perrylives with his family in rural southside Virginia. He is the editor of the Hampden-Sydney Poetry Reviewand teaches at Hampden-Sydney College.