Selected by Marie Howe, 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, “Nathaniel 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.