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ln October 1996, the Center became publisher of the state's oldest continuously published literary journal, Great River Review, which began publication in 1978. Recipient of a Minnesota Book Award and a Pushcart Prize, Great River Review has published some of the finest writers in the country and abroad, such as Olga Broumas, Odysseas Elytis, Ted Kooser, Judith Kitchen, Jay Meek, Philip Levine, Linda Pastan, and Paul Zimmer. 
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Featured in the current issue of Great River Review:

Creative Nonfiction

Michelle Otero

Fiction

Martha Bergland • Lon Otto

Poetry

Francisco Aragón • John Balaban • Philip Dacey • Stuart Friebert •

William Heynen • Art Homer • Richard Kenney •

Maxine Kumin • Anne Marie Macari • Kathleen McGookey •

Tim Nolan • Greg Pape • J.P. White

Translations

Astrid Cabral • Mahmoud Darwish • Lars Gustafsson

Plus, new work by

Philip S. Bryant • Scott Lowery • Elizabeth Majerus •

Michael D. Riley • Sonja Sharp • David Thoreen

Across the Estuary

By Maxine Kumin

The sound of a hammer in the distance

and then the skillsaw singing...

silence a little while and then

the hammer recommences

its satisfying thwacks

far, far enough away to soothe.

Let the house be built.

Let its inhabitants be happy.

May the mourning dove moan

its comforting monotony.

I doze in the sun, confident

no one is being nailed to a cross

today or having his arms

chopped off above the elbows.

Not here.  Not yet.  Safe to say

also not yet across the estuary.