Review of Gulf Coast

by Karen Dockal

Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts is published twice a year (October and April) by the University of Houston, Department of English. The Journal was founded by Donald Barthelme and Philip Lopate in 1986.

Though the fiction is strong and predictably professional in this well-established journal, poetry titles dominate with over sixty works total in the Winter/Spring 2009 edition, including a collection from Alice Notley. There are slightly over forty titles of fiction, reviews, and essays.

The first poem in this issue, “Some Feel Rain” by Joanna Klink, promises a musical selection:

“When it falls apart, some feel the moondark air
drops its motes to the patch-thick slopes of
snow. Tiny blinking of ice from the oak,”

As does Terese Svoboda’s “Avieoli” (sic)

“Could be birds on branches
clicking their hot-tailed haunches

against bark, your ear can’t avoid
hearing your under-deployed

lung’s catch in the middle..”

“Avieoli” is included in a collection entitled “The New Loneliness and this collections shows the breadth of styles that Gulf Coast embraces.

This can be seen in the tight run-on sentences of “A Pineapple for Matt” by Aaron Balkan which races down the page then bumps up against the sprawled out but spare works from Jordan Davis (“Text Messages) and David Dodd Lee (“World Weight”).

Gulf Coast’s description in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market (likewise on Writer’s Digest’s marketplace pages) purports to publish two to eight “new” writers per year and I was hard pressed to find unpublished authors in the two volumes I read. The next volume is to “feature poetry by nine emerging women poets” come fall of 2010. Of course, “emerging” is open to interpretation. The Book Fox (http://www.thejohnfox.com/bookfox/ranking-of-literary-journ.html) rates Gulf Coast as “strongly competitive.” Since Mr. Fox’s ranking system is not based solely on how difficult it is to get into print in the journal, it may be an accurate ranking. On the basis of my limited view of two lovely volumes of the journal and looking only at “breaking into” the publication, it is probably more accurate to place Gulf Coast in the Highly Competitive ranks.

Nevertheless, poetic styles are quite varied in the issues indicating that Gulf Coast’s revolving “readers” and editors are representing a variety of tastes. Good news for contributors.
Gulf Coast has recently added electronic submission to its website but eventually will discontinue accepting paper submissions. The e-submission process itself is slightly awkward but this is a factor of the software interface which is used (by other journals as well) for on-line submissions and less a matter of Gulf Coast’s expectations. Unsolicited submissions are not accepted between April 15th and August 15th. Response time is given as 4-6 months.

Guidelines can be found at http://www.gulfcoastmag.org/index.php?n=5.