Issue 3 reviewed by Small Press Review

Gud: Greatest Uncommon Denominator,
Issue 3, Autumn, 2008.
Edited by Julia Bernd, etc.,
2/yr; PO Box 1537, Laconia,
NH 03247, $18/2 issues,
$10/single copy.

Gud is a bewildering/rewarding combination of high artistic achievement / experimentalism / innovation and everydayness. You’re up there in the Let’s-Do-It-All-Wierd gallery, but at the same time, the street reality outside still manages to feel at home here. Like Michelle Tandoc-Pichereau’s poem “How to Fetch Firewood, For the women and Children of Dafur,” published in four other mags before it got here. Like the editors couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t let it escape. And when you read it you see why: “...Here, darkness feeds on the dark...//from the moment your small light steps away to the/moment you return (on your feet? on their backs?), I will be here, /Abiseun, crouched on colorless soil, breath sharp as memory,/prayer for history to forget itself.” (p. 103).How about a short story time-travel trip back to ancient Mexico (by plane): “On his sixth birthday, Totoalli’s parents took him to the holy city to see the Emperor Cuauhtemoc...from the airport, they took a cab to...Tenochtitlan, the single largest city in the world.”(T.L. Morganfield, “Night Bird Soaring,” p. 84) To the Pre-Columbian via a plane. The whole mag filled with the same magic.When you start reading Gud just be sure to fasten your seat-belt tight.

[review by Hugh Fox for SMALL PRESS REVIEW]