> re-release LISP with cleaner syntax.

A lot of the flexibility of lisp relies on there being no difference between a list of symbols and code (for, example, this is how the entire macro system works).

Function calls being inside the parentheses (and, really, all language constructs just being lists of symbols) is generally what people mean when they say the syntax throws people.

These two things are at odds.

You could go with Racket's method of letting people use alternate delimiters, but that's a fairly trivial reader macro in common lisp and probably not worth releasing a language over.