Tag: Four Way Review
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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…
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URGENT: NEWS OF THE DEATH OF HIBA ABU NADA by João Melo, trans. G. Holleran
Excuse my urgency, oh right-thinking beingsespecially you translucentand self-referential poets,but one of our sisters,the Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada,has just died in Gaza under the shrapnel of a benevolent bomb,sent by another God,different from the one she spoke withevery day. I hesitated to convey this fateful newsso hastily. Perhaps I should waitfor the leaden grey…
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FOUR POEMS by Olivia Elias, trans. Jérémy Victor Robert
Day 21, Words Are Too Poor, October 28, 2023 words are too poor but I have only themmy only wealthempty my hands & so great the sufferings here again I press my arms around my chesthere again I get into this old habit…
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SLUMROYAL by Yahya Hassan, trans. Jordan Barger
INFECTIOUS INSANITY AMONG TODAY’S MEN AND WOMEN WORRYFREE FARMERS ENTWINE THEMSELVES WITH DIRT CATTLE AND COUNTRY WIVES NEPOTISM AND INBREEDING GO HAND IN HAND NOT JUST WITH THE ROYAL POLICE BUT ALSO RECRUITING OFFICERS AND MARINE MINISTERS AND CORVETTE CAPTAINS AND FIELD MARSHALS AND FIELD MISTRESSES REQUISITIONED FROM THE RESERVES MISERABLE SOULS DIG THEIR OWN…
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INTERVIEW with ROBIN LAMER RAHIJA
Robin LaMer Rahija‘s first full length collection, Inside Out Egg, was released in April. Ada Limón writes that “each poem contains the whole unbound strangeness of the human experience–the offhand remark, the blur of being in a body– all of this is written with a humility and understated wit that both growls and sings….” We were…
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AN ENGINE FOR UNDERSTANDING: AN INTERVIEW WITH Willie Lin
Willie Lin’s debut poetry collection, Conversations Among Stones, will be published in November 2023 by BOA Editions. Simone Menard-Irvine interviewed Lin for Four Way Review. FWR: I would like to start out by first asking about what it’s like to be publishing your first full collection of poetry? What was the process of writing and…
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INTERVIEW WITH MÓNICA GOMERY
Mónica Gomery is a rabbi and a poet based in Philadelphia. Chosen for the 2021 Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize in Poetry… her second collection, Might Kindred … skillfully interrogates Goa, queer storytelling, ancestral influences, and more.
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HEARTWOOD by Rose Skelton
On the day after Hazel died – it was a Tuesday afternoon in early March – George stood at his woodworking bench, whittling a bowl. He pressed the piece of yew down, and used a bowl gouge to scoop a smooth sliver of the pinkish-white wood so that it curled upwards and away, falling…
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SUMMONS by Jess Smith
I used to call boys after my parents passed out, my lethal friend Meredith daring me to phone Patrick or Michael and ask what they were wearing. One boy, Joey,…
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THINGS THAT FOLD by Karisma Price
~after Jamaal May My father’s voice after the cancer has spread. A flip phone. A flag. George Bush’s hands, as he pauses his vacation briefly for thoughts and prayers. My body next to the potted plant after my father throws the wooden chair. A cheaply made chair. A small stack of clothes. A birthday card.…
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LAUGHTER IS CLOSE by David Rivard
Laughter is close, even if it’s just the schadenfreude of middle-school girls, their juicy, eye-rolling, malicious glee flying down the street (like a tiny pink slug in a pigeon’s beak), hotting up the air—why pretend you can’t hear? Laughter, the only eternity that’s real. Laughter and its toothy lift off, even when toxic. “Save me”…
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TWO POEMS by 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…