He has come to love rivers, precisely so:
come, as if—no, in fact—on a journey
through years...

So begins Michael Joyce's poem "The man who has come to love rivers," from our latest issue. To commemorate the 2008 flooding that devastated Eastern Iowa—and sent The Iowa Review staff fleeing with armfuls of manuscripts and galleys to higher ground for the summer—we feature river maps on the covers of all three of our issues this year. Click here to learn more about the 1837 Ioway Indian map on the current cover, and stay tuned for our special River Issue coming in August.

Table of Contents, Spring 2009

Donald Platt: Nonetheless; This Happened

Boròka Bò: Caviar

Belle Randall: School Boys on White

Pattiann Rogers: Less Than a Whisper Poem; Edging Dusk, Ars Poetica

Cornelia Nixon: Beach Bunnies

Tod Marshall: The Book of Failed Descriptions

Bobby Baker: Pocket Picking Tips from the Amsterdam Bus Station

Terese Svoboda: Vets

Mark Irwin: Ghost

Kristen Keckler: Star Pawn

Elena Passarello: Of Singing

Ron Tanner: Cats as Tuna [pdf]

Albert Goldbarth: Dynamics; "What becomes," the song asks; After the Broken Shoulder; The Blank

Jack Stewart: For the Undeserving; What Survives a Hurricane is an Heirloom

Megan Sexton: My Daughter in the Fruits and Vegetables

Alexandra Teague: Present Perfect; Two Drafts Written After a Fight

Susan Perabo: Shelter [pdf]

Hadara Bar-Nadav: Severance; Yesterday and Tomorrow

Mike White: At 18; Lawrencian

Peter Waldor: On No; A Slender Thread

Sarah Gorham: Moving Horizontal

Lee Warner Brooks: Whooping; Contraband—A Novlet [pdf]

Daniel Johnson: For Ebele

Frederick Smock: For Simon P____.

Norman Lock: from Alphabets of Desire & Sorrow: A Book of Imaginary Colophons

Jen McClanaghan: The Dead

Liz Waldner: An Account

Julianne Buchsbaum: Of Doves and Madness; Suspended Somewhere in Ether like an Absalom by His Hair

Cecile Goding: Arrow Rock; The Amazon

Macedonio Fernández: from Museum of Eterna's Novel

D.E. Steward: Maig

John Bensko: The Objects of Affection

G.C. Waldrep: Invisible Handshake; Dove Shadow, Nitrate Star

Zhu Shuzhen: Poems

Benjamin Lauterbach: Nahariya

David Shields: Autobiography as Criticism, Criticism as Autobiography

Mark Leidner: Gossip [pdf]; Yellow Rose

K.A. Hays: Vespers, Trento; Psalm of the Dead

Michael Joyce: The man who has come to love rivers; At the zoo, parc Tête d'Or, Lyon

Tom Montgomery-Fate: Saunter: A Conversation with Henry David Thoreau
listen to an audio excerpt from "Saunter" recorded for Chicago Public Radio

Patricia Vigderman: My Depressed Person (A Monologue)

David Groff: My Father, A Priest, Pruning

Naomi Feigelson Chase: Tuna

Joelle Biele: To Andrew: At Four Weeks; To Andrew: At Seventeen Months

Peter Filkins: Rocky; Owen's Shark

Deborah Bogen: Can't Myth Be Left Behind?

David Hamilton: At the Fair II

Cover image courtesy of the Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist. Original map held by the National Archives and Records Administration, Cartographic and Architectural Branch, Record Group 75, Central Map File, Map 821.

© 2009 The University of Iowa