R A L P H The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities Volume
XXIX, Number 4 Late Late Spring 2002 |
TWENTY-FIVE WORTHY BOOKS
Some of the best
that have come to us since 1994,
listed in chronological order.
NEW LISTINGS
Basho and Haiku,
Child Labor and the Pictorialist Ideal, and
The Poetry of Langston Hughes
REVIEWS
Edward Curtis: The Master Prints
Red Poppies
Great Reviews of the Past
BRIEF REVIEWS
ARTICLES
READINGS A Native History of Early America
POETRY
Midlife
LETTERS THE OFFICIAL RALPH
GENERAL INDEX
A PITHY SAMPLE
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An Evening of Readings of Pablo Neruda
"If I told the kids
that they were expected to attend
an evening of recitation of Pablo Neruda ---
there would be hell to pay unless
we could guarantee a personal appearance
by The Hives, singing Spit 'n' Drool."
"If there is no dirt nor squalor,
there is at the same time no shame or humility.
These are gorgeous people with exquisite artifacts of
clothing and tools and hair and eyes and
the very set of faces that bespeaks power and grace."
"Luckily, because of my low intelligence,
I suffered little if any harm at all.
An idiot has no strong loves or hates,
and can see nothing but basic truths.
That, in turn, keeps his fragile heart
relatively safe from harm."
Ants at Work
"She measures the area
and the paths each colony uses for gathering seeds;
she counts the ants; she marks them with distinctive colors,
to figure out whether (for example) the middens
ever become foragers. On occasion,
she will even rent machines to dig up
the whole damn mess so she can
peek at the internal structure.
(You want me to go out there and dig up a bunch of ants,
we imagine the backhoe operator saying to her.)"
Jack Kornfield and Meditation,
The Prints of Currier & Ives, and
The Poetry of Joseph Millar
The King Crane Report of 1919
Part I
"Wilson knew these men well
and trusted their judgment.
Neither had ever been to the Middle East
nor had any connection with the Zionist cause.
Wilson wanted them to go with open minds,
sound out the people on the ground and
to report their honest conclusions to him.
This they did."
Part II
"No British officer,
consulted by the Commissioners,
believed that the Zionist Program could be
carried out except by force of arms.
The officers generally thought that a force
of no less that 50,000 soldiers would be required
even to initiate the program."
Disembodiment
"There is something dismembering
about the way we write stories,
as if they were not as much a part of us as
the cigarettes that are extensions of our fingers
and the shoes that we grow on our feet
and the silently sewn-up sockets
that once tied us to someone else.
As if one could read without at once
articulating a link between story and
something internal and organic and
never there anyway."
"European empires in North America
allowed Indians more room to manoeuvre,
more room to adjust to change and
more room to determine how they would live.
Imperialists didn't do this because
they were embracing some early form of multiculturalism;
they did so because Indian peoples remained a force ---
or forces --- that could not be ignored."
G. B. Shaw Does Dallas
"It was in that fragrant night (Shaw and I
Were sitting together as a freight trudged by)
The air was grey with the lead of the night ---
The boys left us surrounded by fallen crosses
Their eyes leaking blood."
"She's slim and seems distracted, the social worker
who visits my apartment, who wants to know
why my ten-year-old was alone New Year's Eve
when the cops came through the door.
His mother was drunk, I say, and I was up north
with my girlfriend who doesn't want any more kids.
Would she like a cup of tea?"
"We're bound together like sailors, swaying across
a dark ocean, resigned to each other's odd humors
and unable to see the stars overhead,
as we stagger around in the engine room
of a ship with a foreign name."
What is it about the English?
Paradox-of-the-Month
A complete list of all books reviewed in RALPH,
arranged by title, including author, subject, and publisher,
plus a listing of all readings, articles and poems
that have appeared since 1994.
of our most notorious reviews
as collected in the hard-copy
"FOLIO"
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Submitting Books The best way to get books to RALPH for review. Submitting Reviews Suggestions for would-be reviewers --- and payment schedule. History RALPH didn't spring full-blown from the brows of the gods: We've been around (in different guises) for over twenty-five years. The Fessenden Fund Describing the good works of RALPH's official godparent |
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