By Scott Bonette
Heather McNaugher teaches literature and writing at her alma mater, Chatham University, where she is also poetry editor of The Fourth River. She is the author of Second-Order Desire (2019, Main Street Rag) as well as System of Hideouts and two poetry chapbooks, Panic & Joy and Double Life. Her poems have most recently appeared in Oyster River Pages, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and The Cossack Review, and her nonfiction in Fourth Genre. She’s lived in Seattle and Brooklyn and received her Ph.D. in English from The State University of New York at Binghamton. A nostalgic librarian, she once worked for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, where you will find her on a weekly basis wandering among the novels.
I sat down with Dr. McNaugher to talk about her experience as poetry editor for The Fourth River over the past dozen years. As a member of The Fourth River Practicum class this fall, I read through our most recent batch of poetry submissions, and I was eager to get a glimpse of the process for our genre editors.
The Fourth River: Let’s start with the general “what’s it like to be the tastemaker?” What’s it like to decide, to have the final say on all the poetry we send up?
Heather McNaugher: I never thought of myself as a tastemaker. I’m pretty cynical, and I don’t know how realistic it is, but I don’t feel like a lot of people are reading poetry. I feel like more people are probably writing it and submitting it. But I really feel like The Fourth River, especially the poetry, has this opportunity to shift the stereotype around what “nature poetry” can be, and that’s why I’m always asking you all to look for the risks, look for the surprises. Look for the weeds poking up through the cracks in the sidewalk, in a really denaturalized setting, because I find that more interesting.
TFR: It’s funny because it’s such a stereotype that’s ever-present in the room, that “nature poetry” cliché. And having gone through the submissions, I can say that it’s not necessarily a fact that the majority fits that cliché, yet still somehow it’s so strong.
HM: Maybe then it’s working. And if you look demographically at America, we live in cities: we’re pretty removed from our natural environment, pretty disembodied people. So our version of nature must shift with those cultural realities.
TFR: Who are some paragons of nature writing in your mind?
HM: I think a really strong model is someone like Wendell Berry. However transgressive you are in your own nature writing, Wendell Berry’s still a great model, still idolized, and I think deservedly so. Scott Russell Sanders, who came to Chatham a few years back, is someone who writes in really interesting ways about his relationship to place. Mary Oliver, she’s definitely a traditional model, but again, well-loved. She has a tone of forgiveness and openness that I really root for in poetry; she’s a very magnanimous writer.
TFR: So let’s bridge that into your own work. Do you deal with nature in your work?
HM: That’s a funny question. I wouldn’t have ever said that I do, and then suddenly I was. My work is definitely more local, definitely Pittsburgh. I’ve given readings out of state and that’s been a tough sell. I mean, I can make it work, but when you’re writing a poem called “Jerry’s Records,” you have your tribe here in Pittsburgh. They’re not out in Tempe, Arizona. So I would definitely say I’m place-based, but not necessarily a real nature or environmental writer. It’s kind of a coup that I’ve been the editor for this long, frankly. I don’t know that I always make the most sense, but then again we’re talking about transgressing traditional notions of nature writing, so maybe I am.
TFR: What do you think is the value of The Fourth River Practicum class?
HM: I suspect it’s valuable in terms of hands-on experience on the other side of the submissions process. You also get a sense of what you’re willing to deal with in terms of people not following the guidelines, people’s cover letters being ridiculously solipsistic and overlong. You get a taste for “keep it short, keep it sweet” when it’s your turn.
TFR: My experience in the practicum class, how similar is it to a regular journal?
HM: I could be wrong here, but it feels like The Fourth River — it’s not so unique that it’s run by graduate students, lots of graduate students inform journals that are based in universities, but having it attached to the curriculum, that may be unique to this MFA. But I do feel like we have the publishing concentration, and we try to build in as much hands-on experience, including internships. And plenty of people that have done the publishing concentration go on to intern for local presses, or do editorial board work, things like that. I mean with the internet, there’s a proliferation of journals; anyone can make a journal now, for better or worse.
TFR: Were you always interested in the prospect of editing a journal?
HM: I was not even thinking that I was going to land an academic job when this opportunity came along. I was on a total plan B. I had gotten my PhD, I had finished that up, I was working at the public library down here, and I was going to be a librarian, which I sometimes still think “That sounds good too.” But then this job came along and you don’t get the credentialing of the PhD and not at least give it a shot, to be a full-time faculty member. I just want to be around books, that’s my priority, honestly. And the library serves that, serves it more than academia these days. I have to make the effort now — as an academic in the 21st century, you could just have the relationship between you and the screen and probably be successful. It might feel like a soulless kind of success, but you could be successful doing it.
TFR: When you describe the way that you read, it does seem very aspirational. How it’s second nature to you: a bit at lunch, a bit on the bus. I think we all wish we were that dedicated.
HM: Well I don’t have a smartphone. I choose not to have children. I think those are two choices that free up some time for reading. I also admit to reading at the expense of my writing, so there’s a cost. But when I start writing again, I do notice that all that reading is informing my writing. Once I get started writing again, all that reading comes into play. I’m studying: as I read, I’m always studying how a thing is getting done.
TFR: That’s a nice image, the thought of writing being the synthesis of all that reading.
HM: And that’s what I’m trying, more and more, to train you guys to do: to read as writers. You’re probably already doing that, it’s just we’re codifying or formalizing it here in a way.
TFR: I’ve had to learn to give myself a pass on certain things. I worry if I’m not physically writing, but I’ve had to think of it in terms of “doing research,” getting myself in the mode, even if I haven’t written that first paragraph.
HM: That’s really important to acknowledge. It all can go into the writing. I’m one of those people that uses that cliché of “I’m never getting that fifteen minutes back,” but if you’re a writer, you can get it all back. You can use it.
TFR: Is there anything unique about The Fourth River in comparison to other journals?
HM: I suspect it’s unique how graduate-student-driven it is as far as having a whole curriculum dedicated to it. So it’s getting a lot of attention, a lot of eyes. And with that, you guys are turning over every two years, so hanging onto our mission knowing that the personalities informing it are changing, that’s kind of interesting. And I think it’s good that we’re always refreshing, that we refresh the journal staff every two years.
TFR: I found from looking at other journals that most are not defining their aesthetic in the same way we are.
HM: That is probably unique, that we’re committed to it and always refreshing or reminding everybody what it is. That we think it’s important, and it’s also attached to Chatham’s larger missions. We’ve made it kind of a mandate, particularly now that the stakes are so high because of climate change. And I think we have some skin in that game, as literary citizens. How can we serve as a literary model? How does literature serve a larger call to arms?
TFR: As a genre editor for the journal, does your process differ at all knowing that there have already been a few sets of eyes on the work?
HM: Yes, especially when I get to know you guys and what you’re sending up. I can develop a level of trust.
TFR: Maybe not as quick to pull the trigger?
HM: I guess — I’m a “no” kind of person. I can be sold though. I’m a “no” and then also very impressionable.
TFR: It’s an invitation to convince you.
HM: Yes, I can definitely go back. This is why I don’t read submissions for more than maybe an hour and a half at a time, because in that 87th minute, I can tell I’m just saying no —
TFR: Shorter fuse.
HM: — Yeah, so I have to say okay, let’s revisit the last maybe six submissions and see how you really feel, after you’ve had some coffee, go get some lunch, whatever it is. I doubt that’s unusual.
TFR: Are there certain biases that you’re consciously trying to avoid when you’re reading for the journal?
HM: I think it was easier for me in the very beginning to be seduced by a certain kind of voice over whether or not it fit our mission. And now I’m much more, “No, just because it’s a great poem, it also needs to fit.” I don’t think I understood the importance of the mission, or I didn’t see where I could fit into the mission. I mean “taste” itself is a kind of bias, we should be honest about that. I don’t have a problem with that, but I’m sure there’s a problem there. But what are you going to do? I have certain things I don’t do, like read the cover letters, to try to mitigate that.
TFR: Starting with Issue 17, you’ll become the non-fiction editor. What are you excited about with this change?
HM: Well with poetry, the relationship is fairly short-lived. So this will be nice to develop a longer relationship with a piece. I’m also writing more non-fiction, or more prose, lately, so I think that’s useful. That’ll be helpful to me. I’ve certainly submitted less in the prose area, so to see the nuts and bolts from a prose angle, from behind the scenes, might be useful for me as I start submitting more in prose.
TFR: Literary journals, most of them, struggle to find an audience. As you said, there are more people writing than reading. But put a positive spin on it: what’s the value of literary journals?
HM: For me, historically, they’ve been really nice introductory mechanisms to new writing. Some of the writers I choose to teach my students about are because I read them in a literary journal. Often in a bookstore — I really want to put that plug in too — literary journals used to have a place in a Barnes & Noble, when Barnes & Noble had a place! We used to have one right near the movie theater up here in Squirrel Hill, and before you’d go to a movie, you’d spend a half-hour reading. I mean I can’t tell you how many new poets I discovered doing that, and what a nice sort of marketing venue for a journal like The Fourth River. And I also think literary journals are useful for showcasing new ways of doing things, new ways of doing maybe old things.
TFR: By the poets or the people who put the journal out?
HM: Both, I think. You have so much elasticity now with presentation online, you’re literally less constrained. Well you’re constrained by the screen, but there are different constraints. A gift and a curse of the literary journal is that they are probably more useful for the industry that is the MFA, the “new writer” industry, the “trying to get published” industry — that’s who they’re really serving, for better or worse. But within that, great. We hear this question a lot, “Does the world need another poem?” If you’re on the “yes” end of that, the “hell yes,” then yes we also need lots of literary journals doing lots of different things and publishing a lot of different kinds of people.