Unarmed: adventurous poetry journal. No. 21. Early December 2001.

by Unarmed Poetry Journal. Unarmed, 1405 Fairmont, St. Paul, MN. 55105.

Book Review by Michael Basinski

Now 21 issues old, Unarmed has become one of my favorite magazines. It is one of the few I read cover to cover. I get comfortable with the poems because they’re published without the author’s name attached on each page after each poem. Thank god the ego has not overwhelmed every magazine. Adventurous, yes it is an adventurous magazine with poems in this issue by bill bissett, Peggy Lefler, enemy of the people, Michael Mann, anon and the wild team of Scott Helms and John M. Bennett. So, yes, there is plenty of visual work and enough regular type poems and them poems stretch the guts. As the poet writes, “Did rats, as they met death by poison,// approach reason in a mirror image?” Now adventure means in my mind an exhilarating voyage into the an unknown other. It is a first date kinda thing - not knowing what is gunna happen. If I am not mistaken, Isabelle gave Columbus copies of Unarmed. And some copies were buried with Magellan and Armstrong left copies on the moon. And it comes from Minnesota also, a state that surrounds St. Paul etc., which must be having a literary renaissance. And Unarmed is part of this uprising.