07/28/2025
"The Four-Letter Word" by Danielle Foushée: https://www.poetose.com/pub/the-four-letter-word-danielle-foushee #/
"The Four-Letter Word" is a poem inspired by the Q&A following a screening of a documentary film about unhoused people in Los Angeles and Phoenix. In response to another attendee's speculation about why the homeless problem persists (and grows), Danielle proposed that our culture is one in which there is an extreme shortage of love, and until we can recommit to an ethic of love, we will never solve it. The woman, who was sitting in the front row, turned around to Danielle and laughed, "You said the four-letter word!" Danielle wasn't sure at first if her retort was intended as a sarcasm or approval. She asked the woman several weeks later when she saw her again — and this is what the woman said.
Danielle Foushée is a neuro-atypical visual artist, designer, and creative writer working across multiple genres and media. She is Associate Professor and the founding program head of Interdisciplinary Design at Arizona State University. Her creative work has been exhibited and/or installed in Seattle, Bellevue, Portland, Vancouver, Reno, Baltimore, and Tempe, among others. Foushée has won national and international awards for her work, including the Mayor’s Art Award for Community Innovation from the City of Phoenix, Arizona. She previously served as a member of the Phoenix Arts & Culture Commission; as a grants panelist for Arizona Commission on the Arts; and as an arts commissioner for Snohomish County, Washington. Her contrapuntal audio-poem "TED Talks Love" is scheduled to be published in Exposition Review this summer. Her current body of work emerges from a revelatory insight: smart people don't talk about love.
