The pieces in the following issue were submitted to us in October and November of 2019, a lifetime ago. In the wake of the coronavirus and increasing acknowledgement of the generation-spanning pandemic of white supremacy, nature writing might seem beside-the-point, or escapist. What nature writing brings to the conversation is interaction. The universe consists of interactive relationships as large as gravity and as small as an ice chip melting over a July afternoon. Our institutions—whether they be our government, education, or family—shape us, and change with us. The particles that make up our canyons, trees, oceans, this office desk I’m writing on, also comprise our brains. Our conscious thoughts arise from the movement of these very particles and alter the chemistry of our brains. On this topic, Carlo Rovelli’s words come to mind. He says all of reality consists of ‘happenings’:

“A stone is a thing because I can ask where the stone is tomorrow, while a happening is something that is limited in space and time. A kiss is not a thing, because I cannot ask, where is a kiss, tomorrow; “Where is this kiss?” tomorrow. I mean, it’s just happened now. And I think that we don’t understand the world as made by stones, by things. We understand the world made by kisses, or things like kisses —happenings…So to better understand the world, I think, we shouldn’t reduce it to things. We should reduce it to happenings; and the happenings are always between different systems, always relations, or always like a kiss, which is something that happens between two persons.”

Who was I yesterday? Who will I be tomorrow? How was I shaped by the place where I grew up? How was that place shaped by me?

This is what nature and place-based writing means to me. These are the questions we contend with in our journal—such is the case with Kushal Poddar’s “Fish,” Kathryne David Gargano’s “I learn this from my lover,” and Sreshtha Sen’s “Do You Know How to Dispose of a Body?” 

In “Fish,” the lyrical prose piece steps into the mind of a cab driver as he waits for his passenger to arrive. I was struck by this line, “Though he knows it’s silly, he thinks his arms are wooden—in monsoon season,  they swell and come winter they shrivel.” The relationship between his body and the seasons are given meaning and texture—wood, his arms are wooden.

Lines from Kathryn David Gargano’s poem:

“a body without                               
courtesy to itself / or kindness / I slip myself
inside her view / a way of 
keeping or being kept in light”

And lines from Sreshtha Sen’s poem:

“All around me, life
unfurls & I allow it: on a train to Berlin
I watched cows grazing on newborn fields
& you know what, I get it.” 

Each of these pieces speak to what it means to be human during a particular moment in time. That moment can be a train to Berlin, a bed shared with a lover, or outside a stranger’s hostel. 

The questions of “who are we today” and “who are we tomorrow” are vital for us to ask not only as a journal, but as individuals. Most of the staff and editorial team is based in Pittsburgh. A city that was recently named the worst place for Black women to live—for reference, read “Pittsburgh: A ‘Most Livable’ City, but Not for Black Women.” Memorial posters for Antwon Rose and missing posters for Tonee Turner flag many of the street lights and store windows. On June 23rd, Jeffrey Bolden, known as Boosie, was struck and killed in an automobile accident in Mississippi. He was a long-time reader for The Fourth River and served as Assistant Editor while working toward his MFA at Chatham. This is our present. It is a brutal moment, containing all the brutalizations of the past. 

The work of anti-racism is also based on interaction, understanding past mistakes and keeping a fluid and egoless identity about yourself as you learn. I served as managing editor of The Fourth River for two years before taking a turn as Guest Editor. In that time, then Editor-in-Chief, Sheila Squillante, and I collaborated on new ideas. We gave Tributaries to guest editors such as Geeta Kothari and Ira Sukrungruang. I pitched the idea to write a grant to the NEA for an issue led by and designed for Indigenous writers, where all the contributors would be paid. Unfortunately we were not awarded that grant. And, unfortunately, our issues continue to be overwhelmingly white. I hope that these failures will teach me how to be more effective in the future. 

Anna Butler, the Managing Editor who took my place, has done a spectacular job with the past two issues. She needed almost no help. I watched over the course of a year as she cleared out my office and reorganized it, leaving no trace of my cluttered time there. I opened all the cabinets recently and wondered how I had functioned in all that mess. She too has graduated and is currently monitoring monarch butterflies in the mountains. I know that The Fourth River has changed because of our respective roles as Managing Editor. I’m leaving too, and I’m taking the lessons of the past three years with me. I hope that someone else will take my place and set off more interactions that will bring the journal somewhere new. 

Sam Smith
Guest Editor

Jeffrey “Boosie” Bolden was an associate editor for The Fourth River during the fall of 2016 and 2017 while he was a student in Chatham’s MFA program. Additionally, he was a volunteer reader for our forthcoming FUTURE(S) issue, slated for fall 2020 release. He was a member of our team and a shaping force for the journal. 

Boosie was a writer of fiction, nonfiction, hip-hop lyrics, poetry and myriad other forms language can take for which we may not yet have a name. He had talent and something to say to a world which makes it hard, often impossible--even dangerous--for Black men to have a voice. To borrow Sam’s word above, the loss of his voice is a brutal one in our terribly brutal world. 

Boosie was my student, and I hope he learned some things about publishing and about writing from me, as that was part of my responsibility towards him.

But I was also his student, and gratefully so. Boosie wanted better for BIPOC at The Fourth River, at Chatham, in Pittsburgh. He spoke up often and made those wishes known. In our practicum class for the journal, he was quick to dismiss work that didn’t fit our mission or standards. In thinking about him and preparing to write this note, I looked back through two issues’s worth of editorial annotations he made on our submissions:

I've seen this movie before. No. 

No words. No words. 

I'm just going to say no.

He was hard to please and I am grateful for that discerning eye. He had high standards and most of what he read, he put through the ringer. But when he landed on something he loved? His annotations were miles long, filled with detail and praise and excitement, and ending with a confident charge: 

I say this story is a breath of fresh air and definitely deserves a chance!

What will remain with me of Boosie’s legacy is his optimism. He told me once that he wanted to write about Black joy, not pain. He wanted our MFA program to be a space of welcoming to students who looked like, and thought like him. He taught me some of what that meant through the work he championed in the pages of this journal, and some through the way he lived in the world. In his memory, I will do my best to cultivate such a space in these pages, and in our classrooms. 

In the coming months, The Fourth River will be proud to publish a review of Boosie’s first book, Wolves, a collection of essays due out in the fall with Tolsun Books. I hope you’ll pre-order your copy here and help us keep his words vital. 

Sheila Squillante
Executive Editor

This issue is dedicated to the life and legacy of 

Jeffrey “Boosie” Bolden

Associate Editor, The Fourth River, 2016-2020

Chatham University MFA, 2018

Rest in Power