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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 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.
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.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Hardcover
First published October 25, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 5, 2021
“Years love trees in a way we can’t imagine. They just don’t use the fruit like us; they want instead the slant of sun through narrow branches, the buckshot of rain on these old cherries. And we, now that I think on it, want those things too…”
Some solid and heartfelt land and place imagery, echoes of a family and love for family, wry humor, what it means to farm the land, and very elegantly rhymed with identical styles for each poem….
RE-MAKING A NEGLECTED ORCHARD
It was a good idea, cutting away
the vines and ivy, trimming back
the chest-high thicket lazy years
had let grow here. Though it wasn’t for lack
of love for the trees, I’d like to point out.
Years love trees in a way we can’t
imagine. They just don’t use the fruit
like us; they want instead the slant
of sun through narrow branches, the buckshot
of rain on these old cherries. And we,
now that I think on it, want those
things too, we just always and desperately
want the sugar of the fruit, the best
we’ll get from this irascible land:
a sweetness we can gather for years,
new stains staining the stains on our hands.
WHERE TO LOCATE
There is a road
here, but it is quiet as a kite.
It rises and falls with the land, and we
rise with it, also like a kite,
in a wind we had no hand in choosing,
but trust, looking down, one day we might.
TRIED AND TRUE WAYS TO FAIL
Cut the tree with a bent bow saw.
When the blade bucks and sticks in the heart
of the fallen pine, try to free
it with your gloveless hand. Seek art
in the wind’s wrestling the trees. Decide
what your children will think about something,
like difficult art up in the pines.
Or imagine them always happy and running.
Brace your strength with a foot on the trunk
to the left of the blade; pull
with everything in you. When you fall,
unbalanced, notice the maples are full
of color-or filling up, like a glass
of water. Everything you can see
is filling or full. The boy is starting
to crawl. The saw is still in the tree.
GREEEN MANURES AND COVER CROPS
Is there a center in all of this,
or only field peas in flower, or just
our meadow peas in flower? Yes,
all of it, and they, as they must
be, are only ours, and you
are only mine, and, of course, ours
as well, which is the same as mine
for now, while we are undevoured,
which will not last, and will not last
because it seems it will until
the evening ends exactly as
it ended here tonight- still,
with light in the trees and storms somewhere
out towards Prospect- which is to say
forever. But stay with me like peas
in the meadow, which is say always.
BUSH AND CANE FRUITS
This rain will fall all day. The boy
and I are watching it fill the fields,
which is good for fields. To fill, to feel
filled will last and a shield
against the vacant weeks, the drier
days. And what are the things that fill
us up? Little graces, good food,
the arrows we trade, our small good will?
We don’t know what saves us. Better to be
a field, the boy and I decide,
at least he seems to agree. He’s filling
a bucket with everything he finds,
and he’s so pleased with it is full,
his smile a clutch of raspberries
in the forest sun-no more worries,
no more to do, nothings scary.
FRUIT TREE PRUNING
The time to prune, my little book says,
is when the tools are sharp, an old
joke, I’m sure, but I’m not so sure
what it means as advice, practical
or otherwise. Should we love each other
only at our loveliest, or speak
of stars just on the darkest nights?
Regardless, the wind outside is leaking
through the trees, a low ocean
sound: incessant, not ceasing, unceased.
I’m reading my book at the prow of the storm,
a spring night howler, a small release
of energies not my own, not my slow
increases, my fumbling towards fruit
beneath unimpressed stars. The time to prune,
I’d say, is when you can make the cut.
TOOLS
This land for work which makes us whole, which hold for us the days and holds away the dark.
SEEDS AND SEEDLINGS
We’re shaking seeds into their furrows
and wonder how they stay asleep
for years. The clouds this afternoon
are heavy poke-sacks, flocks of deep
pockets swollen black and full
of rain. The night will fill with waking-
children staring at the thunder
in the ceiling, night birds shrilling and staking
their claims in the longer calms, bush beans,
a second row of beets, beginning
to unsleep; the rain, the wildness, doing
and undoing, slow hands unpinning
night from the background, like a flag
meant for a ceremony where the part
we’re meant to play is a mystery,
and everything is about to start.
Some solid and heartfelt land and place imagery, echoes of a family and love for family, wry humor, what it means to farm the land, and very elegantly rhymed with identical styles for each poem….
RE-MAKING A NEGLECTED ORCHARD
It was a good idea, cutting away
the vines and ivy, trimming back
the chest-high thicket lazy years
had let grow here. Though it wasn’t for lack
of love for the trees, I’d like to point out.
Years love trees in a way we can’t
imagine. They just don’t use the fruit
like us; they want instead the slant
of sun through narrow branches, the buckshot
of rain on these old cherries. And we,
now that I think on it, want those
things too, we just always and desperately
want the sugar of the fruit, the best
we’ll get from this irascible land:
a sweetness we can gather for years,
new stains staining the stains on our hands.
WHERE TO LOCATE
There is a road
here, but it is quiet as a kite.
It rises and falls with the land, and we
rise with it, also like a kite,
in a wind we had no hand in choosing,
but trust, looking down, one day we might.
TRIED AND TRUE WAYS TO FAIL
Cut the tree with a bent bow saw.
When the blade bucks and sticks in the heart
of the fallen pine, try to free
it with your gloveless hand. Seek art
in the wind’s wrestling the trees. Decide
what your children will think about something,
like difficult art up in the pines.
Or imagine them always happy and running.
Brace your strength with a foot on the trunk
to the left of the blade; pull
with everything in you. When you fall,
unbalanced, notice the maples are full
of color-or filling up, like a glass
of water. Everything you can see
is filling or full. The boy is starting
to crawl. The saw is still in the tree.
GREEEN MANURES AND COVER CROPS
Is there a center in all of this,
or only field peas in flower, or just
our meadow peas in flower? Yes,
all of it, and they, as they must
be, are only ours, and you
are only mine, and, of course, ours
as well, which is the same as mine
for now, while we are undevoured,
which will not last, and will not last
because it seems it will until
the evening ends exactly as
it ended here tonight- still,
with light in the trees and storms somewhere
out towards Prospect- which is to say
forever. But stay with me like peas
in the meadow, which is say always.
BUSH AND CANE FRUITS
This rain will fall all day. The boy
and I are watching it fill the fields,
which is good for fields. To fill, to feel
filled will last and a shield
against the vacant weeks, the drier
days. And what are the things that fill
us up? Little graces, good food,
the arrows we trade, our small good will?
We don’t know what saves us. Better to be
a field, the boy and I decide,
at least he seems to agree. He’s filling
a bucket with everything he finds,
and he’s so pleased with it is full,
his smile a clutch of raspberries
in the forest sun-no more worries,
no more to do, nothings scary.
FRUIT TREE PRUNING
The time to prune, my little book says,
is when the tools are sharp, an old
joke, I’m sure, but I’m not so sure
what it means as advice, practical
or otherwise. Should we love each other
only at our loveliest, or speak
of stars just on the darkest nights?
Regardless, the wind outside is leaking
through the trees, a low ocean
sound: incessant, not ceasing, unceased.
I’m reading my book at the prow of the storm,
a spring night howler, a small release
of energies not my own, not my slow
increases, my fumbling towards fruit
beneath unimpressed stars. The time to prune,
I’d say, is when you can make the cut.
TOOLS
This land for work which makes us whole, which hold for us the days and holds away the dark.
SEEDS AND SEEDLINGS
We’re shaking seeds into their furrows
and wonder how they stay asleep
for years. The clouds this afternoon
are heavy poke-sacks, flocks of deep
pockets swollen black and full
of rain. The night will fill with waking-
children staring at the thunder
in the ceiling, night birds shrilling and staking
their claims in the longer calms, bush beans,
a second row of beets, beginning
to unsleep; the rain, the wildness, doing
and undoing, slow hands unpinning
night from the background, like a flag
meant for a ceremony where the part
we’re meant to play is a mystery,
and everything is about to start.
December 30, 2020
These poems are carefully and gracefully sown-- each one made up of 4 quatrains like rows in a field. With images of scarcity, abundance, marriage, and family, this book praises the labor and fruit of life in the countryside.
May 22, 2014
I'm a sucker for poetic constraints, and Perry dutifully applies several to this collection. Every poem here is written in meter and rhyme, a rarity by any modern standard. Additionally, the name of each poem is based on the chapter title of M.G. Kains' Five Acres and Independence, a how-to-farm book originally published in 1935. Some poems are just about farming (or seem to be), others use farm metaphors, and some are simply love poems that relate to their titles only very abstractly. I suppose one could argue that writing a poem to match a title is a bit Creative Writing 101, but I'm willing to cut the poet a lot of slack since I find these poems very...comforting. That's the right word.
It seems that for Perry, writing poetry within such constraints can be, paradoxically, liberating. Looking through the table of contents, one wonders how he's going to pull some of these poems off, based on their titles. I kept reading to see how he would deal with titles like "Essentials of Spraying and Dusting"(as it turns out, pretty well). There's a bit of a "what will he do next" factor at first, but luckily for the reader, it's soon easy to get past the novelty and enjoy the very satisfying results.
It seems that for Perry, writing poetry within such constraints can be, paradoxically, liberating. Looking through the table of contents, one wonders how he's going to pull some of these poems off, based on their titles. I kept reading to see how he would deal with titles like "Essentials of Spraying and Dusting"(as it turns out, pretty well). There's a bit of a "what will he do next" factor at first, but luckily for the reader, it's soon easy to get past the novelty and enjoy the very satisfying results.
March 7, 2012
Fifty-two formal, accessible, delightful poems about beginning a farm in Virginia. They're also about paying attention, fidelity to place, fatherhood, and husbandry (in the whole, Berryian sense of the word). Neil's a friend and a wonderful sonic craftsman. Highly recommended.
July 27, 2013
I really enjoyed this collection of poetry. The farmland images are so beautiful. I think my favorite lines are in the poem "Small Farm Fruit Gardens" which said "...stretched and smoothed by the moon's quiet hand / as it slips below the tree line..." How beautiful.
August 13, 2016
I really enjoyed Perry's poetry. His farming imagery imbedded with themes of marriage, love, having children, etc. was moving. If you like poetry, I would suggest Nathaniel Perry.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews