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?”
