A Furious Surrendering— Poems for Navigating the Unraveling by William Prindle
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Full-length, Paper
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This title will be released on October 30, 2026A Furious Surrendering explores the paradoxical challenge we face today as the world we know unravels. It treads the narrow path of surrender to what is, no matter how disturbing, while holding a vital center, a living intensity that helps us survive the worst storms. It equips the reader with poetry as a survival kit the soul needs as the journey grows more turbulent. It keeps us company as we navigate strange waters. Beginning with the admission that “every risen thing will unravel, yet may still become the stuff of creation, and merits equal parts grief and praise,” this book invites us to find balance by plumbing our past and our present, using “watery faculties too subtle to be dammed, waving graceful wands in the dark, infusing the raging tide with light.”
Bill Prindle is a poet deepening his voice in the third half of life. His poetry explores the human and nonhuman worlds and the seams between them by creating portals to new ways of seeing and connecting with the greater web of life. But they are also invitations to resilience in the face of the “great unraveling” of human systems that have overshot the planet’s ability to sustain them, and that serve the wealthy at the expense of most people. From forest wanderings to surviving today’s highways and modern America to practicing restorative silviculture, his poetry is both personal and collective, introspective and prophetic, reminiscent and present.Bill takes inspiration from the daily astonishments of his life in the Virginia woods. He also roots his writing in a diverse range of authors, from the rhapsodes of ancient Greece to the ecstatic poetry of Rumi and Kabir, to English speakers like Yeats and Eliot, to Spanish-speakers like Neruda, Machado and Lorca, to more modern poets like Gary Snyder, Robert Bly, Joy Harjo, and Jane Hirshfield. His 2025 poetry collection Medicine Cache Under Lichen was published by Finishing Line Press. He hosts the Charlottesville Live Poets Society, has won multiple Poetry Society of Virginia awards, and has been published in several journals and anthologies, including the 2021 Streetlight Magazine Anthology. He has studied with Lisa Russ Spahr, Neil Perry, and Gregory Orr among other great teachers.
PRAISE:
A Ferocious Surrendering is a beautifully bellicose cry for resilience in the face of the great unraveling in the world today. While the title suggests both violence and passivity, the book is a celebration of things past and a hopeful vision for what is emerging. We are taken on walks through forests and fields, and into old houses and oceans. We are visited by hummingbirds and red-tailed hawks, octopuses and eagles among other beings. The author also plumbs science for its hidden meanings, turning invisible waves and particles into revelations. And yet he does not fear the dark recesses of the mind, exploring paths where desire can outpace fear, and the beauty of language can make meaning in the face of vanishing. This book holds surprising word choices that expand the senses and the mind through image, sound, and motion. The author paints evocative early life images, but also takes the reader far out into forests of imagination. His ferocious pursuit of wonder creates poetry that could be written in ‘squid ink on oyster shells.’–Josip Novakovich is the author of the novel April Fool’s Day, and the short story collections Honey in the Carcase, Tumbleweed, Heritage of Smoke, Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust, Salvation and Other Disasters, and Yolk. He was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013, and received the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and a Whiting Award in Fiction and Nonfiction. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Threepenny, Ploughshares, and many other journals, and has been anthologized in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, and O. Henry Prize Stories.
A Furious Surrendering: Poems for Navigating the Great Unraveling provides readers with compass, magnifying glass, and protective cloak for our travels in perilous times. It opens with poems that redeem the past, returning us to our tender selves, placing memories “in the hospice house/…..on that vacant lot” in our hearts. The poems also present observations of the natural world (“hellebore/rising through packed snow”) that tune in to wren and eagle, and also foster letting go, adoration, and exuberance. Invocations of elder energies range from the water cycle and fungal mycelia to artistic elders such as Yeats and Dylan Thomas. These poems help us build resilience for what Paul Krugman called the “great unraveling.” The book also cheerfully asks unanswerable questions, while challenging us to use our innate faculties to tend gardens where “wildflowers may bloom/in sufficient profusion/to dazzle [our] confusion.”–Amelia L. Williams’ poetry collection Species of Concern (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2025) explores environmental loss and resilience, and was a 2025 American Book Fest Best Books Award Finalist. Her chapbook Walking Wildwood Trail: Poems and Photographs (Wild Ink Press, 2016) showcases a poetry and art trail that served as a tactic against the now-cancelled ACP fracked-gas pipeline.
In a time when some writers seek to give us easy answers, the poems in William Prindle’s new book build a world of nuance and complexity, even as he focuses on “the great unraveling” we all now inhabit. The collection begins with memory and autobiography, evoking an “angry house” and “the dozens of ways/ a sensitive boy could be flayed.” The book’s heart, though, is found in the Virginia landscape where Prindle now lives and which inspires much of his writing. Like Thoreau, who would be a worthy companion for this poet on his walks, Prindle understands what Thoreau also knew: Attention to the natural world brings “grace for today.” The gifts this wild world continues to give Prindle are many, and he generously shares them with his readers. He acknowledges the need to “rage and weep,” but he also offers us “new languages” and manages to construct “a raft/ of light big enough” for all.–Margaret Mackinnon, author of The Invented Child and Afternoon in CartagoBill Prindle‘s latest poetry collection, A Ferocious Surrendering, is a heartfelt revelation of youthful experiences mediated by his inner compassionate elder, creating an imaginative space in which many surprising worlds are explored. He is forgiving and hopeful as he shares unique images of his early and present surroundings, giving us a roadmap for the unraveling of our world. Bill’s words ring true for all of us!–Patsy Asuncion, Ed.S., author of three poetry collections: Cut on the Bias, Lineage of Weeds, and A Universal Belonging. Her poems have been published in twenty-plus publications.
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