Gordon Square Review!

Gordon Square

The Inaugural issue of Cleveland's new literary magazine, Gordon Square Review, just came out. Editor-in-chief Laura Maylene Walter writes about "the energy and sense of urgency that run throughout Gordon Square Review’s inaugural issue" in the editor's letter:

Whether it’s a poem like “Scrapbook” or a short story like “Beasts Headed Home from the Party” by Hannah Lackoff (“We are young, we are wild, we are richer than we know”), our first issue glimmers with artful language, startling content, and innovative form. Watching this issue take shape confirmed that there’s not only room for a new online journal like Gordon Square Review, but that the depth of talent, both here in Northeast Ohio and beyond, demands it.

The zine rates a feature review by Michael Barron in Culture Trip:

The launch of the Gordon Square Review is a sign that literary journals might not be dying out after all. Cleveland is a literary city and Cleveland knows it. It was here that the literary theorist Fredric Jameson was born, here that writer Adelle Waldman first cut her teeth as a journalist, and here the novelist Sherwood Anderson had the nervous breakdown that led him to become a writer...

--and also a review by Anne Nickoloff in Cool Cleveland:

"It's really fascinating what kind of bizarre aesthetics emerged from our selections. Things that really surprised me, that I never would have had in my head when I went to start reading submissions," said Walter. "I think there are a lot of exciting pieces."

The review received more than 800 submissions, from Northeast Ohio... but also places as far away as Canada, Malaysia, the U.K. and India.
The lit-zine is sponsored by Cleveland's newest lit organization, Literary Cleveland.

"39 Planets (with Large Black Hand)" by Chris Pekoc

from Gordon Square Review, Nov. 2017

But, is there poetry in the issue?  But of course!  Poets featured include

• Scrapbook  |  Donna Hunt
• Self-Portrait as Eurydice   |  Jenelle Clausen
• Mob Justice  |  Bethany Brengan
• Internment  |  Jen Karetnick
• You Do Not Have Heaven in the Attic  |  Paula Persoleo
• Before She Stopped Living  |  William Soldan
• Almost Night  |  Bill Lythgoe
• Memory  |  Mary Weems

--not to mention the contest winner, "On the Anniversary of the Kent State Shootings" by Mimi Plevin-Foust

And Gordon Square itself just got featured in none other than the New York Times as the hottest new thing going in Cleveland, at least in the arts. If it's the reason Cleveland's star shines according to the venerable NYT, maybe Gordon Square is something you should check out (come for the theatre... stay for the poetry! So don't forget to go up the road another mile and drop in at the Bowled over by Poetry at Mahall's reading, every first Monday of the month).

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Links:

• Gordon Square Review
• Lit Cleveland News