Nine Acres - Paperback

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.