Project MUSE®: Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction.daily12026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (1999) through current issueLatest Articles: Fourth Genre: Explorations in NonfictionTWOProject MUSE®Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction1544-17331522-3868Latest articles in Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction. Feed provided by Project MUSE®A Sword of Ours, Poetical
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985335
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Recently I (this is Pat) ran into a former student at a conference. As we caught up, I learned that he was working as the nonfiction editor for [Prestigious Literary Magazine], a place I’d long ago given up on, I told him, after coming close so many times but receiving no cigar. What’s more, I told him, they’d twice handwritten on my rejection form some version of “We couldn’t find a narrative arc,” to which I replied in my inner voice, “Of course you couldn’t; you were reading an essay.” In any case, I decided that they weren’t likely to get what I was doing, so I’d stop bothering them and wasting my time. Try again, my friend exhorted, suggesting that with his pull, we could finally see a Pat Madden essay in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallA Sword of Ours, Poetical2026-03-12text/htmlen-USA Sword of Ours, Poetical2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®109792026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Secret Passage
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985336
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The furnace in the house I grew up in was massive. As tall as my father and wide enough that it acted as a rumbling steel wall, partitioning one side of the basement from the other. The huge silver vents that protruded from it gave it the appearance of a metal octopus-monster, and when it came to life, the sound it made was more roar than hum. It had a six-by-six-inch glass window at its base, the pilot light visible inside. When it was dormant, there was only the single blue flame. But when the heat turned on, peering through the window was like watching hell being born. One moment, the blue flame would be silently flickering in an unknowable darkness and in the next, the furnace’s giant belly was consumed in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallSecret Passage2026-03-12text/htmlen-USSecret Passage2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®574822026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12How Birds Fly
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985337
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Procedures:Hold the fan blades in your handsMove your arms up and downTYPE OF ANIMAL: My brother is what you might call a bird aficionado. He can easily articulate the differences between a crow and a raven, and has even memorized the names of particular birds that live in zoos: Maria, Slidell, Mr. McBouncy-Pants, Leon, Virginia, Evan, Dino. I am what you might call a bird enthusiast. While we share a deep affinity for winged things, Daniel is the one whose website explains that a typical Wonga pigeon’s nest is a “saucer-shaped twig/stick platform w/ 11.8 in diameter & built 9.84–65.61 ft above ground.”These days, Daniel’s favorite bird is the cassowary. When I ask him why, he texts back, “I love cassowaries due to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallHow Birds Fly2026-03-12text/htmlen-USHow Birds Fly2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®306312026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Among Hawks and Hummers
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985338
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On Ontario’s Sibley Peninsula, August was not too early for warblers and nuthatches, swallows and hawks to begin moving toward their winter ranges. They gathered at the southern tip, resting, feeding, waiting for clear skies and a fair wind. In a rocky clearing between Lake Superior and the forest, two rustic cabins housed the Thunder Cape Bird Observatory where I would work for the month. A college prof in my mid-fifties, I was anxious about doing well outside of a classroom.Birds have been important to me ever since the first great blue heron of my life levered itself up from a riverbed and lofted over my head, its wingspan greater than my height. Every spring, warblers have been bright postcards from warmer
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallAmong Hawks and Hummers2026-03-12text/htmlen-USAmong Hawks and Hummers2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®190472026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Interstitial Space
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985339
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The title of my undergraduate thesis was “women in small rooms.” I had written it that way, all in lower case; I even used a small-sized font. I wrote my thesis in the basement room of a townhouse I shared with three other women. My walls might as well have been plastered in yellow wallpaper with swirls and paisleys that moved in slow motion like oil gliding on the surface of water. I was simultaneously fascinated and horrified by women trapped in the small rooms of their brilliant minds. My thesis advisor had introduced me to Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space to give my thesis some architecture. The book had titles like “The House. From Cellar to Garret. The Significance of the Hut,” “Drawers, Chests and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallInterstitial Space2026-03-12text/htmlen-USInterstitial Space2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®218242026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Some People Think They Should Go to Heaven but Not Have to Die to Get There
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985340
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When thinking about failure I often think of Michael Jordan, who, as I see it, is one of our greatest failures—perhaps our greatest failer of all time.I know—the man made $94 million from the NBA alone.I know—the three-peat championship run, and the second three-peat championship run, and the MVP awards, and the records. You don’t have to tell me, I’ve read about it.But the truth is that I know little about basketball. I played pee wee soccer, attended a couple of my older brother’s basketball games during his single elementary school season, and decided that was enough for me. I admit I have never cared much about basketball.But listen, I want to put this up front, that I know little about basketball, because I
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallSome People Think They Should Go to Heaven but Not Have to Die to Get There2026-03-12text/htmlen-USSome People Think They Should Go to Heaven but Not Have to Die to Get There2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®287102026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Flickering Like Lichens
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985341
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I once heard about a woman who went into labor and biked herself to the hospital. I loved this story. I loved this woman: her autonomy, her fitness, her willingness to take a calculated risk. Her refusal to submit to anyone’s ideas about what a pregnant person should and should not do.I thought of her often in the days after my positive pregnancy test. I had long-ago decided that I, too, would be the kind of person whose self-possession expanded during pregnancy. I would write for long hours each day. I would eat a lot of pizza—the good kind, with whole leaves of basil and soft buffalo mozzarella. I would go rock climbing and wear the pregnancy harness that my friends had been passing around for years. Because I
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallFlickering Like Lichens2026-03-12text/htmlen-USFlickering Like Lichens2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®227442026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12An Enchantment of Language
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985342
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For a long time, I did not have a body. A kind of enchantment, and not the good kind!, had draped the body I should have had—let’s call it the faggot-body for short—draped it in a stereotype-of-sorts, namely, that a person can stop being a faggot if he can stop having a body:Body = faggot.Mind = not-faggot.Mind = language.Silence = faggot! (= death).It was a kind of enchantment of language. Talked my way out of anything—even my body! Anticipated every attack—neutralized it with words! Spun a story! Told a joke! Was entertaining or smart; or seemed to be entertaining or seemed to be smart.You may have noticed that I use exclamation points more than you might think is wise. Certainly, I use them more than I used to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallAn Enchantment of Language2026-03-12text/htmlen-USAn Enchantment of Language2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®247622026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12On Purity: Notes from America’s Long Trails
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985343
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When a stranger offers you something free during a thru-hike, you say yes. It’s called trail magic for a reason: My most enchanted memories from my long walks are random kindnesses. In New Mexico, a woman drove miles from her ranch so I could wait out a hailstorm in her truck. In Vermont, a man picked me and my friends up from a gas station and brought us to his house for the night and, over a home-cooked salmon dinner, revealed he was a professional magician by pulling a foam ball from my ear.I knew the rule even on my first hike, the Pacific Crest Trail. So when a man in a Hawaiian shirt and Tevas sat down uninvited at the table I was sharing with a hiker called Thor at a lodge just north of the California–Oregon
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallOn Purity: Notes from America’s Long Trails2026-03-12text/htmlen-USOn Purity: Notes from America’s Long Trails2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®336832026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12The Long Arm of War in the Arctic
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985344
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Its remoteness is the first thing. From the air, it is the only thing—metamorphic rock pushing against the last stands of conifer and birch along Norway’s Arctic coast. Below me is a world jumping off into the sea. Human presence feels unlikely here. Yet in this remote region where tundra and taiga vie for dominance sits a town called Kirkenes, seven miles from the Russian border.A bear mounted in attack pose stands guard over the baggage carousel at the tiny Kirkenes Airport, daring us to pick up our luggage. I grab my duffel bag and head out into bone-chilling Arctic wind. The cold air stings. It is June 2024.Snow sits still on the mountains.I am 2,000 miles and four countries away from the war in Ukraine, 250
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallThe Long Arm of War in the Arctic2026-03-12text/htmlen-USThe Long Arm of War in the Arctic2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®472452026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Coming & Going
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985345
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I live in Texas now but I’m originally from California, which is a very popular place to be from, especially if you live in Texas.One thing many Texans have in common is that they’re actually Californians. I’m reminded of a famous Texas-themed bumper sticker.“I wasn’t born in Texas,” the bumper sticker says, “but I got here as fast as I could.”My friend Matt, who was born in Texas, lives in California now. He got there as fast as he could. I asked him where Californians are from.“Mexico,” he said.Even though I was born in California, I didn’t pick up any of the lingo. And even though I’ve lived in Texas most of my life, I haven’t adopted any of its charms.To this day, I have the impeccable nonregional dialect of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallComing & Going2026-03-12text/htmlen-USComing & Going2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®217152026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Care and Kara
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985346
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It started blandly enough, me looking for Ida in a snowy Chicago alley. Then the boy appeared. He was striding fast as if trying to catch up. But I didn’t know him. Then two others appeared from a building in front of me.At first I thought, They’re meeting each other. But the angles were off, hands in pockets, everyone wearing the same colors.At least one agency in town was providing guards for visiting nurses at the time, but not for the likes of me, a mere CNA (certified nursing assistant). I’d been mugged before in my life, once in San Francisco, twice in Chicago, so I thought I knew what I was looking at. A gang initiation would probably have been one guy, I thought; a rape would probably not be a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallCare and Kara2026-03-12text/htmlen-USCare and Kara2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®271292026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12All My Heads and All My Tails
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985347
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Beware the Ides of Gene.When her sibling was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, my wife morphed into the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar, who had met his end by failing to heed the prophecy of a soothsayer. This soothsayer had divined his murder by reading the entrails of a sacrificed animal, and when Caesar ran into the haruspex on his way to the senate, he mocked her. “You realize the Ides have come?” he said. To which she replied, “You realize they have not yet gone?”On her way to the rest of our lives together, my wife, too, mocked a soothsayer, this one a genetic counselor. In the face of what appeared to be a commonsensical proposition—find out if you have this inherited disorder—she was uncharacteristically
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallAll My Heads and All My Tails2026-03-12text/htmlen-USAll My Heads and All My Tails2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®179732026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12The Hidden World
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985348
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We’re in our kitchen in Iowa City preparing dinner. I’m washing broccoli and peppers while David seasons the salmon, rice already steaming in the rice cooker. “A caseworker from Boston called today to say she’ll be processing my request,” David says, reaching for the roasted garlic.I nod. It’s been two weeks since he sent a requisition to the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (Division of Child Guardianship), a month after our visit to Worcester, and almost two years after his diagnosis with a rare form of cancer at age 63.“But the surprise is,” David continues, turning to me, “she said I’d lived with many foster families, and I couldn’t get that phrase out of my head—many foster families, many
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallThe Hidden World2026-03-12text/htmlen-USThe Hidden World2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®289012026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12These Little Sums: On Writing Through The Last Crisis (And The Next)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985349
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Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year and Chris Arthur’s What Is It Like to Be Alive? Fourteen Attempts at an Answer both came into being, in part, during our global pandemic and in the time surrounding COVID lockdowns, when everything stopped and we retreated to our homes and gardens. Renkl proceeds methodically with her project, mapping the book onto four seasons, beginning with winter (“The Season of Sleeping”) and ending with fall (“A Dark Season”). For his part, Arthur surveys what surrounds him, diving into memory, research, and imagination to create a wide-ranging assortment of thematically and philosophically linked texts. Both writers attend to the small and close-at-hand, describing
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallThese Little Sums: On Writing Through The Last Crisis (And The Next)2026-03-12text/htmlen-USThese Little Sums: On Writing Through The Last Crisis (And The Next)2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®182912026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Inter-Review
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985350
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I’ve just finished reading Homing and enjoyed it. Congratulations, Sherrie! Both of our books have Rust Belt in our titles and in our themes. As you say, quoting a professor early in your book, “I know places like this exist, but I never hear about them.” Why do you think writers like us find these Rust Belt communities so fascinating to write about? BTW, I remember those old pool tables that you fed quarters into and the chunk as the balls dropped.God, I love those pool tables. Great to e-meet you, John, and to work on this back and forth via our books. Thanks for your compliments on Homing!I’ve finished your collection and had such a great time reading through and learning about Detroit and also how your
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallInter-Review2026-03-12text/htmlen-USInter-Review2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®156602026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12About the Contributors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985351
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Pamela Alexander’s Left won the Beloit Poetry Journal’s 2024 Chad Walsh chapbook competition. She is the author of four previous full-length collections of poems, including Slow Fire (Ausable/Copper Canyon). Earlier books won the Yale Younger Poet and Iowa Poetry Prizes. On the writing faculty at M.I.T. and Oberlin College for many years, she then spent five years traveling the continent in an RV with her cat. On the editorial board of FIELD, she was co-editor of the 2020 book about Wendy Battin in the Unsung Masters series from Gulf Coast/Pleiades/CopperNickel. Her essays have appeared in Cimarron Review and Denver Quarterly and her poems in many periodicals. She also writes mystery novels under the pen name Pam
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/217/image/coversmallAbout the Contributors2026-03-12text/htmlen-USAbout the Contributors2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®108012026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12