R A L P H The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities Number 134 Early Late Mid-Summer 2005 |
NEW TITLES
Prints from the Funny Vehicles Words Brushed by Time Folk Furniture
Great Reviews of the Past
BRIEF REVIEWS LETTERS MORE LETTERS
ARTICLES
READINGS Frogs' Legs and BB Guns
Maquis and Makhorka
POETRY The Animals You Eat THE OFFICIAL RALPH
GENERAL INDEX
A PITHY SAMPLE
SUBSCRIBE
Night Soldiers
"Ah, the great they.
The fine secret spring
that makes a spy novel work.
Every character, every locale,
every passing car, every passer-by.
They all may be a threat. One must always be
looking over one's shoulder."
New-York Historical Society
"This 1932 lithograph
includes the representation
of a newspaper ---
you're looking over a man's shoulder
to read the headline ---
'NOT MY BABY'
SAYS ROOSEVELT."
"The text is fairly pedestrian,
but the shots more than make up for it,
especially the Los Angeles Shoemobile,
the Mufflermobile of New Jersey,
the Russell Stover Candies rolling bungalow,
and a ladybug car from Japan."
"His infant older brother who never
Came home, two cousins lost in war, an uncle
Who captained his ship over the flat world's edge,
And one fleece-lined pilot lost years now inside
The stilled weather of a relative's box camera."
Of Canada's Doukhobors, Hutterites,
Mennonites, and Ukrainians
"Is it possible that
there can be a luxury in simplicity?
If so, it is reflected in
this delicious volume from
the University of Alberta."
Mao T'se-tung
"But lest you think
they are being too snooty,
just below Buddha
you'll find Marlon Brando,
just above Robert E. Lee
there's Andy Warhol,
and cheek-by-jowl with
Virginia Woolf, we can find
Elvis Presley."
Robert Wilson's
The Vanished Hands
My Life in CIA
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Gangbanging
Zen Koans
Cutting Tools
Leonard Garment
September Song
Edweard Muybridge
Horse Photos
The Starmaker
Part I
"Olafson invents
an immense galactic history
of a jillion different planets,
surveyed by a narrator who
simply floats into them by some
ill-defined kind of telepathic tourism."
Part II
"Here on our own planet,
we need only contemplate
Lenin's embalmed corpse in 1924,
preserved under glass
for worship like
the bones of a
medieval saint."
Stealing a Little Bit of Beethoven
"Wonderful music like this
was the worst hurt there could be.
The whole world was this symphony,
and there was not
enough of her to listen."
"This was my project,
and I was going to make something,
a little purse for coins,
with satiny soft furs sewn together.
Did I trap and kill moles?
Or use mice from the kitchen mousetraps?
I must have skinned them myself,
and then tried to cure the skins,
and I suppose they stank
and I was persuaded to bury them."
"Once divided between
Greece and Yugoslavia,
a country presently
occupied by Germany,
with willing assistance from
the Croatian minority,
except for those Croats
who are communist
and fight with Tito,
whose father was a Serb
and mother a Croat.
And yes, I like
the tobacco quite well."
Talking Big
"We are sitting here at dinner talking big.
I am between the two dullest men in the world
Across from the fattest woman I ever met.
We are talking big. Someone has just remarked
That energy equals the speed of light squared."
"The animals you eat
Leave footprints in your eyes.
You stare, four-year-old pools
Troubled. 'They don't have souls,'
I tell you, in defeat."
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"
Help perpetuate honest, noisy, pesky book reviews.
With your $25 subscription, you get
a free copy of one or more of the titles from
Mho & Mho Works
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 thirty years. The Fessenden Fund Describing the good works of RALPH's official godparent Copyright Notice The Reginald A. Fessenden Educational Fund, Inc. |
Visit our Previous Issue  
Visit our Current Issue Visit our Next Issue