REVIEW OF “GUD, GREATEST UNCOMMON DENOMINATOR” MAGAZINE

REVIEW OF “GUD, GREATEST UNCOMMON DENOMINATOR” MAGAZINE, biannual, Issue 6, Summer 2010, 206 pages, fiction, poetry, artwork, produced by Greatest Uncommon Denominator Publishing, PO Box 1537, Laconia, NH 03247,$12
perfect bound, $3.50 electronic copy, http:gudmagazine.com, editor@gudmagazine.com

Review by Barbara Bialick

I’ll get this fact out right away. GUD is very good, but I’m only reviewing it from the poetry perspective. There are only 12 poems in this issue. But they fit in visually with the other genres mentioned. A good-looking magazine with a surrealistic, yet contemporary theme, it is not so dark that it’s inaccessible to general readers. It’s strong on imagery and symbolism as in the poem, “Whale on the Roof” by Rose Lemberg:

“My roof is flat, and /there was once a whale on it, red with the dawn,/toothlessly grinning—and grass grew on its back...”.Not wanting to mow the lawn because that was “bad for the environment”, she still had to live with the city coming to mow “the hippie grass down…”

Another strong poem—actually they’re all strong poems—is “Again” by Molly Horan:
she thinks back to a younger age—around September 11, 2001—when she wondered if only she’d not done certain things maybe it wouldn’t have happened. This combination of superstition and imagery is compelling. “Maybe if I’d been younger/hadn’t let my bangs grow out/hadn’t bought the lipstick/too dark to be a Kool Aid stain…” The school sends home a “crumpled” note with her sister about not watching the news: “Every time the clip plays/your child will think the planes are crashing again.”

On it’s website the magazine reveals that it comes out twice a year and requests you submit online. They call themselves an award-winning print/pdf magazine that is also available on Kindle. They are currently reading for their summer 2011 issue.

It looks like an intriguing magazine to publish in, but it better be good, as the pun goes. I’ll close with some lines from “Crumpled Receipts” by Bryan C. Murray:
“I took my vitamins today, by alphabet,/the way my Centrum dictates…Like most people, I don’t trust return clauses…people always get carried away: men exchanging/ex-wives/doctors calling patients back, reinserting tumors…” And so on.

Give it a read and try to get read if you can.