SEPTEMBER MONTHLY: Interview with Jessica E. Johnson
We’re excited to share a new series of interviews exploring craft. In these conversations, we’ve asked writers to take us behind the scenes of their finished works, showing us the process behind the poem, the scene, and the story.
First is our conversation with Jessica E. Johnson, on her memoir Mettlework: A Mining Daughter on Making Home. This memoir explores her unusual childhood during the 1970s and ’80s, when she grew up in mountain west mining camps and ghost towns, in places without running water or companions. These recollections are interwoven with the story of her transition to parenthood in post-recession Portland, Oregon. In Mettlework, Johnson digs through her mother’s keepsakes, the histories of places her family passed through, the language of geology and a mother manual from the early twentieth century to uncover and examine the misogyny and disconnection that characterized her childhood world– a world linked to the present.
Considering the focus of these conversations is on process, we’d be remiss to overlook our own process in conducting the interview! We’d like to give special recognition and thanks to our 2024 summer intern, Kirby Wilson, who helped shepherd these conversations from initial readings to their final form. Kirby was instrumental in crafting the conversations you now see before you.
Enjoy!
- Published in home, Interview, Nonfiction, Video
JUNE MONTHLY: In Solidarity with the Palestinian Poeple
Nearly a year after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack and Israel’s subsequent escalation of a decades-long project of state-sponsored genocide of the Palestinian people, Gaza continues to face deadly bombings and attacks from Israel. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the death toll of Palestinians is in the tens of thousands, with no sign of Israel relenting.
In response to the death and destruction in Palestine, Barricade and Four Way Review joined together to raise the voices of Palestinian poets and others from around the world standing in solidarity with them. While we stand fervently against Anti-Semitism, we also resist its false equation to anti-Zionism; we equally condemn Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism and xenophobia, and imperialism, all of which function together to murder and oppress the poor and working classes and to legitimize expropriation and forced displacement.
The poems you will read here have been previously published in Barricade and represent a desire to use our platforms to uplift and disseminate translations from and in solidarity with Palestinians. Barricade shares contributions on its forum Ramparts, a makeshift oppositional online space founded on the basis of urgency and necessity; Four Way Review has compiled a selection of Ramparts posts here, with the aim of expanding the reach of these writings and giving them a more permanent home.
Four Poems, Olivia Elias (trans. Jérémy Victor Robert)
SLUMROYAL, Yahya Hassan (trans. Jordan Barger)
Urgent: News of the Death of Hiba Abu Nada, João Melo (trans. G. Holleran)
- Published in Monthly, Poetry, Translation
ISSUE 19
POETRY
COMMENCEMENT SPEECH, DELIVERED TO A HERD OF WALRUS CALVES by Matthew Olzmann
TWO POEMS by Melissa Crowe
TWO POEMS by Ariel Francisco
BALIKBAYAN FILLED WITH THEORY by Dujie Tahat
TWO POEMS by Keetje Kuipers
IF YOU ARE READING THIS by James Hoch
SIX ECCLESIASTICAL LOVE SONGS by C.T. Salazar
A POEM WHERE GOD IS A PARABLE by Jay Kophy
VENUS DE MILO WITH DRAWERS: SELF-PORTRAIT MADE OF MINK & PLASTER by Caroline Parkman Barr
MEMORIAL DAY by Chelsea Dingman
I USED TO PRAY by Yuxi Lin
TWO POEMS by Jessica Johnson
FICTION
EXCERPT FROM THE HISTORY OF LITERACY by K-Ming Chang
MONSIEUR REYNARD by Holly M. Wendt
ALL WE HAD TO DO WAS SWIM by Jon Bohr Heinen
ART
FOUR WORKS by Suzanne Koett
- Published in All Issues, Issues, Uncategorized
STAFF ANNOUNCEMENT!
As we approach the end of the year, we want to thank our writers for entrusting their work with us and our readers for helping us celebrate and recognize so many wonderful voices. In addition, 2019 has brought new changes to Four Way Review. David Lerner Schwartz will be serving as the new Fiction Editor for Four Way Review. Currently the writer-in-residence at St. Albans, his work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, New York magazine, and produced by Red Bull Theater. He holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. We would like to thank Hananah Zaheer and K. K. Fox for the many years they have given our community and their work in celebrating fiction. Read our new fiction standards here and submit!
- Published in home, News, Uncategorized
TENNESSEE QUARTO
Our staff is located around the world and we pride ourselves on publishing writers representing a variety of voices and hometowns. However, as of September, three of our staff members now live in Tennessee.
“MY DADDIES HAVE VOICES LIKE BACHELORS, LIKE CASTIGATORS & CROONERS…” by Tiana Clark
TWO POEMS by Kendra DeColo
BLINDKEY POINT by Norris Eppes
Best of the Net 2018 Nominations
POETRY:
“FMK” by Amorak Huey (issue 12)
“Me Too” by Alyssa Beckitt (issue 13)
“Beauty” by Kyle Dargan (issue 12)
“As Fog Rolls In, Night Finds Its Footing” by Luther Hughes (issue 13)
“Things That Fold” by Karisma Price (issue 13)
“Resolution to Recover Lost Things” by Ellen C. Bush (issue 12)
FICTION:
“Francie and Samantha” by Janice Obuchowski (issue 12)
“Collapsed” by Michael Holladay (issue 13)
Kerrin McCadden
HOMING
The sky is at the feeder again.
I mean the indigo bunting
with no bearings for home.
A man pulls into the driveway
after work—crunching stones,
hallooing up the stairs—
wanting to know about my day.
All the days are wranglers,
I say. I am not able to cite
my sources, but I make a list.
A woman at lunch said we do not
plan to live two hundred years,
and so I think to tell him
—well, I do not plan to live
two hundred years! In my hands,
pillowcases I bought, embroidery
floss. Everywhere I go I think
about what is impossible.
Can homing pigeons carry
their nth letter and still get lost?
My job is to build a home,
I tell this man I have already built
a home with. My job is to do
something with my hands.
LATE WINTER
In a handful of seasons,
water and cold dirt
In a handful of seasons,
water and cold dirt
- Published in Uncategorized
Issue 13
TWO POEMS by Kerrin McCadden
LAUGHTER IS CLOSE by David Rivard
THREE POEMS by Alyssa Beckitt
THREE POEMS by Jessica Hincapie
THINGS THAT FOLD by Karisma Price
SUMMONS by Jess Smith
TO MY CHILD BEFORE SHE ARRIVES by Brian Simoneau
LAMENT FOR SOME OTHER SAIGON by Sarah Audsley
AS THE FOG ROLLS IN, NIGHT FINDS ITS FOOTING by Luther Hughes
FICTION
ARTWORK
- Published in All Issues, home, Issue Page 1, Issue Page 2
QUARTO: Tribute to Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan
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Saturday Morning: Remembering Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan by Addrienne Su
“This is How I Remember Her” by Blas Falconer
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