#Ae stallings nocturnal meaning how to

At least there's tension and fading / light.' This creates a really interesting paradox. I think that, aside from the title, this sentiment is drawn from the opening lines: 'I'll start this with an ending, or something / like an ending.

MH & AMK: 'Introduction' feels like a 'thesis poem' for your collection, Nine Acres. So I suppose reality does provide an element of continuity in the poems - but doesn't it always in a way? The speaker in these poems is the part of me that was and is still interested in finding sustainable ways to be - whether that means not using chemicals in the ground, remembering to be kind, learning the names of local plants or what have you.

#Ae stallings nocturnal meaning how to

So much of that time, as is presumably clear in the poems, was spent learning how to be parents, preparing new ground for growing vegetables (we grow about a sixth of an acre of food for the family every year - everything from squash to sesame).

I suppose everything is fictional to a degree once it is put on the page, but the poems were written during the first year or two of my oldest child's life, when we had just moved to the nine acres in rural Virginia where we live now. Nathaniel Perry: The poems borrow quite a bit from 'real' life. I'm curious how much of the inspiration for these poems is derived from autobiographical experience and how much is imagined? Matthew Huff & Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum: Each of these poems shares a strikingly similar setting as well as a strong continuity from the speaker(s) of each poem: rural farmland, forestry, and a young and rather apprehensive voice. from Nine Acres, selected by Guest Editor Mark Jay BrewinīIO: Nathaniel Perry is the author of Nine Acres (American Poetry Review, 2011), which won the 2011 APR/Honickman First Book Prize. His poems and translations have appeared recently in A merican Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Gettysburg Reviews, Bat City Review, and elsewhere. He is the editor of the Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review and lives with his family in rural southside Virginia.Īn Interview with Nathaniel Perry by Matthew Huff & Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum Moon in the clear-cut, the neighbor’s acres īeside me and what’s in the still-standing Or imagine them always happy and running.īrace your strength with a foot on the trunk What your children will think about something, When the blade bucks and sticks in the heart Lee’s long field behind us, we were sliding Like an ending, at least there’s tension and fading I’ll start this with an ending, or something