I’ve been meaning to mention this fine magazine for quite some time, but it’s always slipped to the bottom of the stack. The Paper is a magazine of new poetry and reviews edited by David Kennedy from 29 Vickers Road, Firth Park, Sheffield S5 6UY, U.K.

Issue 8 was co-edited by Nate Dorward, editor of the important magazine of post-modern poetics The Gig. The Paper features an essay on the Vietnamese poet Linh Dinh by Susan Schultz, extensive reviews of Pierre Joris’ 4X1, Poasis: Selected Poems 1986–1999 and A Nomad Poetics by Tony Baker and David Kennedy, respectively, as well as an in-dept review of Geraldine Monk’s Selected Poems by Nate Dorwood. New work by Jack Gutorow, Richard Burns and Christine and David Kennedy, among others, rounds out the issue. Christine Kennedy’s “The Golem…Its Internal Monologue” takes pride of place with its extended meditation on the Hebrew aleph-bet and the connection between life and letter. David Kennedy’s review of Joris is an in-depth look at the political implications of Joris’ work in the post-9-11 world.

Sadly, this issue of The Paper appears to be its last, although new projects are in the works at Cherry-on-the-Top Press. Write to David for more information.

Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu.
Translated by Victor Mair.

Though Burton Watson’s translation comes a close second, this version is the absolute best English translation I have found. Mair includes the “rhyming prose” the poetry and lots of the zaniness that somehow gets passed over in other translations. For those wishing to have more notes Mair generously refers them to his writings in the Sino-Platonic Papers. Mair is second to none in his understanding of archaic Chinese and takes us back to the truly revolutionary collection of writings that Chuang Tzu really is.

The disarming part of Unarmed, however–and this is where the demystification business comes in, I suppose–is that the poetry is presented without the author’s name appended. Identifications are given at the end of each issue. I find this aspect of Unarmed interesting because it does indeed make a point: most experimental writing seems to rely on an alarmingly small number of techniques to be considered “experimental” writing. By separating the name (and therefore the reputation) from the product one can see the product for what it is. More on these points soon.

Gianni Simone’s Kairan 9 arrived a few days ago after a long silence, and it still remains one of the the best forums for the discussion of mail art and visual poetry. The latest issue of Kairan doesn’t disappoint, with its 18 page “Mail Art and (Visual) Poetry Zine Index.” Not only does Gianni list the names and addresses of these venues–many of which are new to me–but he adds helpful annotations. Gianni includes an Italian Mail Art ABC, and an article on mail art by David-Baptist Chirot that includes some interesting auto-biographical insights. Samples of alternative art, a sticker, an interview with Tizana Baracchi, and other goodies round out the issue. Write for a copy to:

Kairan
Gianni Simone,
3-2-23 Nagatsuta,
Midori-ku, Yokohama-shi,
226-0027 Kanagawa-ken, Japan
jb64jp[at]yahoo.co.jp

Say it’s three or four in the morning and you’ve just pulled in to an all-night spoon with your late-night rig, and while you’re stirring some of that moon-milk (you know, the kind that never goes sour) into your mud, you happen to look over and there’s this little stapled pamphlet lying next to a drip of mustard that’s fallen off the grease and onion burger you’ve been contemplating with a philosophic eye. “What the he…is this?” you say to yourself, expecting this ten page tiny wonder to be some religious tract trying to persuade you to give up all the good things in life, and then to donate some of your hard-earned cash to a crazy ministry in Minneapolis, and as you lift it closer to your specs it seems that you are indeed correct, because you see that it comes from

1405 Fairmont
St. Paul, MN.
55105

and you peer closer looking for some ministry of holy something-or-other to be written somewhere on the thing, but instead you see that it’s ABSOLUTELY FREE and it contains words in columns that don’t make sense, and words in stacks that still don’t make sense, and things that look like little eye charts, that are called VISUAL POEMS, that still don’t make sense, and now you’re puzzled and chuckling at the same time in the early hours in the spoon you’re sitting in and you call out to the waitress, “look at this little pamphlet here. This is the darnedest thing, because none of it makes sense.” And the waitress says some scruffy looking, pale scrawny fellow left a stack of them over on top of the USA TODAY stand, and people have been picking them up and taking them in to the restaurant and staring at them and saying pretty much the same thing you’re saying before they throw them away or use them to doodle phone numbers on and you’re welcome to have yours mister, because they are ABSOLUTELY FREE, or you can give it a pitch into the old #13 file cabinet and save us waitresses on the early morning shift a couple of steps while you’re at it. But you have a better plan for all those little pamphlets you find out there on top of the USA TODAY stand and you grab up ten or twenty of them for those times on the road when only the bushes stand between you and your shame and not a roll of tissue paper is in sight.

Unarmed tries hard to demystify the avant-garde, or so they proclaim on their web-site (www.unarmedjournal.com) and in theory it all sounds pretty nice, but I’m afraid that poetry–even good poetry from people like Duane Locke, W.B. Keckler, Thomas Clark, Alan Halsey, Catherine Daly, and Michael Sawyer, if presented ABSOLUTELY FREE in this format will be valued at about the same rate of exchange by its readers. Poetry deserves a better home than this. Contrary to what the editors say, I believe that new poetry can’t be written by anyone and everyone and that new poetry is worth more than 0 printed on cheap paper. We give Unarmed 10,000 stars for intention, 2 for the result.

Edit: You may one to see Jesse’s further comments on Unarmed, here. -Dan