Medicine Cache Under Lichen by William Prindle

In William Prindle’s new collection, Medicine Cache Under Lichen, nature will have its way, and mankind must yield eventually to her relentless wisdom. Yet, the anxiety over such consequence is not all there is, for the poet ensures that there is a time and a place “to change your dread/to compassion”, and when all is in total disarray, there is hope, too, in a simple shared action, “if enough of us/clap, really clap, from the heart, we can/bring that fluttering spirit back to life.” Whatever might horrify us—whether real or not—it is not too late “to find/the path of restoration/together before nightfall.” What a blessing to be reminded of the value of shared beauty and the beauty of shared values by a poet of such thoughtful and eloquent sensitivity!

–Sofia M. Starnes is Virginia Poet Laureate, Emerita, and serves on the Editorial Board of  The Journal of the Virginia Writers Club. She is the author of her own poetry collections, including The Consequence of Moonlight: Poems, Fully Into Ashes, A Commerce of Moments, Corpus Homini: A Poem for Single Flesh, Love and the Afterlife, The Soul’s Landscape, as well as a number of edited volumes.

From the provocative and promising title to the last poem “Apologizing to Ferlinghetti,” the reader of this collection is treated to the work of an intelligent, compassionate, and deeply committed poet. William Prindle explores the complexities of life, as represented by the lichen’s symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae, in a range of strategies: through science and technology, through contemporary culture, and through a humanistic spirituality. As vice president for a sustainable energy and climate consultancy, Prindle’s well-informed understanding of local and global ecological cause and effect lends his work an implicit integrity: “If this earth is my hospice nurse/ then as I breathe, I will be hers.” Well-traveled and culturally sensitive, especially of Native Americans, he finds answers to living a decent and meaningful life: “to greet each other’s solitudes.” He asks questions of himself and of the reader, always searching for answers to the “riddle of extremes.” Prindle does not use fancy poetic footwork here, but his direct language is often epiphanistic: “I cannot destine my life.” He gives us a dose of good medicine for our times.

–Frederick Wilbur has authored two poetry collections: As Pus Floats the Splinter Out and Conjugation of Perhaps. His work has appeared in Shenandoah, The Atlanta Review, The Comstock Review, The Dalhousie Review, Rise Up Review, and Mojave River Review. He was awarded the Stephen Meats Award by Midwest Quarterly (2017).

These poems are both a delight and a mystery of language, written by one who’s knelt at the feet of bison and moss, loons and larvae, or what Rilke once referred to as fragments of an ancient name. He does not ask to be their equal, only to dwell within them “where a song once gave rise to a river.” To read these poems is to cross a metaphysical bridge to “some place of reunion that was prepared for me all these years.” Every poem is proof that against a backdrop of flawed family, wounds, and political arrogances, that bridge is available to us. We can find the way home.

–Sharon Ackerman is an Appalachian poet residing in central Virginia. She is poety editor of Streetlight Magazine, and her poems have appeared in the Southern Humanities Review, Atlanta Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Roanoke Review, Appalachian Places, Still: The Journal, and several others. She has one poetry collection, Revised Light (Main Street Rag, 2021), and a second in the works.