I think literary journals as a rule have more of a sense of what is being written more widely than, say, publishing houses. Literary journals’ distance from the commercial aspect allows an avenue that’s invaluable for the literary scene.
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.
When I told people I was trying to write poems as an investigation into the impacts of fracking, they often immediately asked, “Are you for it or against it?” They also sometimes said, “Poems?”
It’s a small breath the bird uses
for its song, intake of air
At dusk, the screech owls warn us with a bounce
of song that we’ve come too near
It takes three days,
three walks with Leo padding along
to the Bray Street pond—
Light snow
on the rinked field
and she’s axial out there
In the morning, I cut through
the alley on the way to buy flour.
Driving the road along
the oyster beds: they’re
mud flats this morning,
To be 39 and unmarried is to be pitied. To be 39 and gay is to be condemned.
“There are places where we might want to be a little more discreet,” my girlfriend says. We are discussing our upcoming trip across the country.
