"Ganymede justifies its epic reputation as one of the most extraordinary gay publications on the market. You’ll be holed up for weeks with this stylish slice of gay life...a very rare find. No gay coffee table should be without it!"
--www.GayAgenda.com
"It is easy to see how Ganymede issues become collectors items: they’re timeless, in a way, yet timely at the same time."—www.Homo-neurotic.com
REVIEW OF GANYMEDE #7 ISSUE:
"When's the last time you teared up leafing through a literary journal? The new #7 issue of the gay men's lit/art quarterly Ganymede offers 400 pages of the most powerful and touching expressions to be found anywhere in the gay world. Ganymede's poetry section, at nearly one hundred pages, is unquestionably the finest survey of gay male poetry today, pulling in work from Estonia, Slovenia, and Hungary as well as our own shores, assembling voices both famous and unknown. But the same can be said for the photography portfolios, essays, reviews, and short stories. The vision of gay culture Ganymede gives us is simply breathtaking." --AssociatedContent.com
REVIEW OF GANYMEDE #5 ISSUE:
"When I pulled Ganymede #5 out of its box, I held a spine nearly an inch thick, healthy for an annual but unheard-of for a quarterly. And when I reached the end of its 344 pages, my head was spinning. Nothing remotely like Ganymede has been seen in the gay community in my lifetime. After crucial essays by Edmund White and Oscar Wilde, each section, presented with style and snap, leads you deep into gay male experiences of genuine interest and pungency. Ganymede has already been praised for its textual importance and visual splendor, but with this issue, it rises to real historic grandeur. No literate gay man can afford to miss it."
--AssociatedContent.com
CHROMA REVIEWS GANYMEDE #4 ISSUE
“Issue #4 offers an enormous amount of stimulating prose and photography to enjoy...Ganymede is gaining momentum and is definitely a journal to watch.”
CHROMA, Britain’s top literary/art print journal
Review by Eric Karl Anderson, June 30, 2009
Ganymede is growing and fast. This New York City journal written by and for gay men offers a rich look at the current gay cultural climate featuring photographs, essays, reviews, poetry and short stories.
What’s so refreshing about this new gay journal is the informed understanding of our gay past it brings when offering a survey of the arts. This makes for a rich portrait of how the gay community has evolved over the years while offering ground-breaking new creative work that hints at where we’re going. For instance, the first issue features an astute account by John Stahle of what New York City meant for a gay man in 1968 while also elaborating how it has transformed forty years on. Later issues have featured sympathetic new translations of Cavafy’s poetry alongside the emotional and sensual photographs by Simon Pais-Thomas and the refreshing new fiction of NYC writer Sam J. Miller. The page numbers of Ganymede are increasing with each issue that’s published, showcasing a fascinating cross section of references, from an examination of Muscle Ramon, the first online male pinup brought to fame by gay bloggers, to an account by Richard Canning of an enormous auction of Yves Saint Laurent’s art collection raising funds for AIDS research.
In the new issue #4, Christopher Roland offers a snapshot account of the daily life of gay porn and bodybuilding star Matthew Rush. The atmosphere behind the camera is nothing like the horny sex being filmed. With squabbles between the porn stars’ boyfriends and the tedious wait for Viagra to kick in, a porn set is anything but erotic. Roland examines how the scattering of films these porn stars make act more as publicity for their oftentimes more lucrative escorting services.
Fabio Panichi’s photographs create a dialogue between the mediums of painting and photography. They primarily feature instances of self-portraiture where the artist treads the line between these two in search of illumination that sometimes takes the form of a burst of light. The effect is oftentimes startling, causing you to do a double-take given their surrealist Magritte-like slant. There is also a tension between literature and the visual arts evident in many photographs, depicting an oftentimes naked man grappling through an imaginative landscape seeking inspiration and knowledge where he can find it. These are very strong pictures by a skilled young photographer.
This issue also features a poetry slam section which showcases the debut publications of seven talented gay poets. It’s fitting that Jee Leong Koh’s poetry follows after Panichi’s photographs as Koh is in a dialogue with the visual arts as well. Simmering with violence and bodily harm, Koh’s poetry hints at a dangerous past that makes itself felt in the movements of everyday life. Some of this poetry also seeks to create a self portrait while referring to specific artists, filtering their style into the poet’s unique form of self expression. Within his poems the body is annihilated to declare an individual is not simply defined by his physical form alone. Koh skilfully uses his artistic ancestors as a touchstone to understand himself.
James Newborg’s poetry imbues coded meaning into everyday objects highlighting the emotional rifts between the presence of memories in our day to day interactions. Matthew Stradling is a well known visual artist, often depicting male nudes. His first published poetry in this issue explores the destructive urges of desire and the irrepressible longing for what cannot be obtained. Jon Rentler’s poetic voice is urgent and full of a lacerating tenderness, longing for a reconnection through a messy landscape of affairs and spurned lovers. Dug McDowell’s poetry explores adult themes using humorous nursery-rhyme-like rhythms. The sensuality of encounters in the outside elements is infused into the poetry of Zhuang Yisa. Matt Cogswell’s poem follows a typical afternoon which I’m sure many web-savvy men who are reading this will be able to identify. Online connections are made, lost and misfired using multiple usernames across a series of websites with the result often only being disappointment and shame.
Following these rich poems are a series of photographs by Andrea Francesco Berni. Like his sometimes collaborator and fellow countryman Panichi, Berni’s photographs include a lot of self portraiture, but contain a much more playful and relaxed feel. The pervading mood is a sense of duality and weightlessness. Apart from his work included here, Berni’s series of modern Alice in Wonderland photographs featured on Flickr are definitely worth a look.
Ryan Doyle May’s daring short story “Almost No Memory” recounts the prolonged death of the narrator’s mother. This is followed by memories of previous occasions when his father entered his bed and the sensation of their sexual exploration. When his mother died, the covert encounters between the man and boy during the night ended as well. May brilliantly writes about his protagonist slipping into his mother’s wedding dress in a desperate effort to reclaim the connection he’s lost with his father and take his mother’s place.
Daniel Rodrigob Schultz could be the Brazilian equivalent of German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. His pictures feature action shots of young attractive friends in various states of undress rollicking through the night and day, basking in the sun or caught in a moment of contemplation in the shadows.
B.R. Lyon’s evocative story “As Is, I” describes what might be an imagined sensual evening in a rented apartment in Cairo. The lover is absent, but he is there in the narrator’s mind. The projected encounter feels entirely real as the narrator gropes his own body imagining that it is that of another man. A repeated image of a headless body gives a dark overcast to this night of intimate escapism.
There are three more series of self portraits which explore the male nude and a sense of splintered identity. Rene Becker’s photography offers double shots of the author “alone with himself” in a domestic setting. Many of these pictures feature Becker fighting, arguing with himself, contemplating self destruction or simply looking bored. It’s a meditation on isolation and loneliness that is easy to sympathize with. Pablo Moran, Jr’s photos also show some double-takes of the author either seeking a sensual union with himself or inextricably tied to himself by a strip of fabric or barbed wire. The images where the photographer is presented alone suggest mystical experience, especially when interacting with technology.
Davide Poggi photos hint at a violent or self destructive personality, sometimes torn apart by light or crouching naked in a crumbling or desolate landscape.
The three chapters from Bruce Nugent’s novel Gentleman Jigger provide a fascinating insight into the Harlem Renaissance black artistic movement of the 20s and 30s. Here some of the leading figures of the time from this circle are fictionalized in a group known as the Niggeratti. However, these extracts are more than just a time capsule depicting the vibrant personalities and social issues that this important group were grappling with. Nugent’s writing is direct, powerful and his descriptions of the large cast of characters are full of wonderful insights hinting at deeper psychological complexities. Nugent also was the only member of this black artistic movement who dared to deal openly with homosexuality in his prose. It’s surprising that this valuable piece of writing was only published last year by Da Capo Press and Tom Wirth should be praised for resurrecting his writing.
Another historical treat included in this issue is Oscar Wilde’s story “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime.” At a dazzling social affair Lord Arthur has his palm read and is told that he is to become a murderer. He desires to marry, but knows he must fulfil his destiny and murder someone before he can be wed. The story is filled with Wilde’s typical paradoxical witticisms: “nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion” or “If a woman can’t make her mistakes charming, she is only a female.” It is a fine example of how the great author succeeded in turning “the conventional wisdom of the Victorians on its head” while exposing the queer nature of all humankind.
As you can see, issue #4 offers an enormous amount of stimulating prose and photography to enjoy. The rich diversity and craft exhibited in this issue has left me with a deeper understanding about where we’ve been and where we’re going as a gay community. Ganymede is gaining momentum and is definitely a journal to watch.
CHROMA is a literary and arts journal in Britain. Eric Karl Anderson is author of the novel "Enough" and has published work in various publications such as The Ontario Review, Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, Blithe House Quarterly and the anthologies From Boys to Men and Between Men 2.
REVIEWS OF GANYMEDE POETS ONE
"With mounting excitement and buzz, young gay poets have been emailing samizdat files of the poetry sections from each issue of the new gay men's quarterly Ganymede. Ganymede, which publishes an impressive range of writing and artsy visuals, decided to gather all their poets into one section each issue, and as those sections grew, they became a journal inside a journal, the finest and most essential survey of gay male poetry in English from around the world. Now, Ganymede has collected a year's worth of poets into its first annual anthology, Ganymede Poets One.
"This anthology sets new standards, not only for the pungent and varied content, but also for presentation. Each poet has his own section, usually with several examples plus bio alongside a very cute photo. But the editor also snatches some blazing phrase from the text to headline each section (Depart My Bone Cage, Sung through Spittle, At the Feet of Your Stare, Skin Against Flame, Holy Fire of the Forgotten). Page after page of these tags, combined with very cool art photos illustrating everything, make for quite a reading experience. Any poetry lover will jump in head first. Ganymede Poets One is an innovative, nearly overwhelming new player among poetry anthologies." --AssociatedContent.com, July 2009
"Like the journal itself, the book is beautifully produced... What impresses me here...is the quality of the verse. There is more queer life between these covers than in virtually any gay novel...articulated by a range of voices, mostly young but varied in attitude and background... Read it as a strangely irrational postmodern novel—with sexy pictures."
--Top British poet Gregory Woods in CHROMA, England's top gay lit journal, Oct 2009
REVIEWS OF GANYMEDE STORIES ONE
"GANYMEDE STORIES ONE is a collection of 18 short stories that appeared in the first six issues of the gay men's quarterly GANYMEDE. This collection combines those stories into one beautiful volume, complete with stunning black and white art photography.
The stories range from weird and bizarre to sweet and sentimental, and run the gamut of issues and complications facing gay men. The collection offers a unique voice and literary viewpoint. The stories are not light and easy but thought-provoking and contain a healthy amount of subtext to each. Not all will suit every taste, especially some of the more esoteric offerings, but a platform for such innovative thought and questioning is important in today’s media. The writing is eloquent and concise.
Equally important are the exquisite art photographs that accompany the stories. The black and white pictures are timely and fit each story, just as the variety in author photos provide a hint of whimsy and character. The visuals are treated with the same reverence and care as the writing and together produce an incredible collector’s item that will entice the senses and evoke emotion as well as thought.
This volume contains a little-known story from Oscar Wilde and a curiously homo-erotic one from Robert Louis Stevenson. Juxtaposing those classics are innovative new voices offering tales of harm and confusion. Each is a highlight in its own right: the chilling and evocative story from Sam J. Miller as well as Andrew J. Peters’ whimsical fairy tale both create lasting memories, as does John Stahle’s delightful “Daphne and Fifi.” Dark, light, haunting, eerie, bizarre, humorous, romantic, dirty—this collection of stories offers something for every literateur who desires a darker subtext beneath the surface of well-crafted prose."
--RAINBOW REVIEWS, Nov 29, 2009
REVIEW IN CHROMA, Britain’s leading gay lit/art journal
“This anthology brings together short stories published in the first six issues of Ganymede. What sets it above similar collections is both the quality of the writing and the audacity of its editor in establishing a new benchmark for anthologies of this kind.
From Andrew J. Peters’ adorably amusing gay fairytale, The Vain Prince, to Cyrus Cassells’ aphoristic Another Horse on Your Horse Ranch, established principles of prose are overturned. Peters’ fairytale anti-hero, Adalbert, is rather like a queer Turandot, and his prose swaggers along like a drunken queen in a nightclub, the very antithesis of what a fairytale should be. At the opposite are Cassells’ exquisitely drawn short paragraphs, dexterously poetic and dripping in color like a golden-tongued seraph. Elsewhere you can clearly see an individual writer’s non-literary influences. B.R. Lyon’s “As Is, I” aspires to the condition of music, as does Marc Andreottola’s “Lots.” What sets Andreottola’s story apart from others here is the filmic quality he brings to his narrative. Just as a filmmaker can focus on one image and make the viewer seem unsettled so does Andreottola: “All the entertainer could see was the thigh of the Stump, a strong meaty thigh. The thigh activated the entertainer somehow, like a switch. He felt like the thighs could crush him like a nutcracker.” On a completely different level, John Stahle’s brilliantly articulated “Memories of Inexpression” shows that evocative writing doesn’t need to be a dialogue. With Beckett-like precision, Stahle’s prose bears the imprint of isolation and memory like few other pieces in this anthology.
Gay writing is universal and it is, therefore, good to see the Ljubljana-based writer Boris Pintar included in this anthology. Slavic Thickets: Two Stories, translated from the Slovene by Rawley Grau, is coruscating. His writing positively reeks of scents; pissing is not so much about the act as it is about the smell. In fact, this is prose that assails the senses in every way: cocks are eye-balled, sniffed and licked; nostrils are there not just to smell the aphrodisiac of sex but to snort coke, poppers and glue. Paragraphs are long – but never over-long – but their very tightness leaves one feeling rather as if one has been clubbed over the head. They are brutal. The only other story that comes close to this kind of semi-pornographic wasteland of spunk and hard sex is Eric Karl Anderson’s Beauty Number Two.
Production values are high, and similar in style to Ganymede’s quarterly journal. Lavish black and white photographs are interspersed throughout, including some of the authors, who tend to be an attractive bunch. A perfect stocking filler – or as Marc Andreottola might have put it in his story, a dirty black sock filler.” --Marc Bridle, Dec. 2, 2009
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