Dear Poo,

I was recently reading an archived review by Carlos Amantea that had me rolling on the floor. In a good way. Any way for me to get in touch with him? Or if this violates editor/contributor privilege, could you let him know carolyn creedon digs him and I wanna write him a fan letter.

--- Best,
Carolyn Creedon
ccreedon@email.smith.edu

§     §     §

Dear Carolyn,

Recently RALPH printed an interview with S J Perelman. He had these cautionary notes about rolling on the floor:

Q: In your own writing, when you're at work, thinking hard, and a particularly felicitous expression or phrase comes to mind, do you laugh?

A: When I was young I used to literally roll over and over on the floor with delight, marveling at the intricacy of the mind that had wrought such gems. I've become much less supple in late middle age.

In your request to get in touch with Amantea:

Please be informed that we have no privileges here, outside of poverty and the right to be silly. And the occasional chance to be amazed.

For instance, we are amazed by the circles in our lives. You have a bevy of fans here from the early days of RALPH.

When the earliest on-line version of the magazine went up ten years ago, one of the first poems used was your own "litany." We do hope they got your permission to use it.

And not too long ago, a composer made contact with RALPH to see if she could put "litany" in a song cycle she was writing. We had to confess we did not, at that time, know how to reach you.

Now we do, and we like that very much. You can write whenever you have a chance, and we will be honored to respond, most especially because, your funny/sad poem still lurks about in our heads, all these years after we first stumbled across it on these pages.

--- Carlos Amantea

Go to the review
that too may have you
rolling on the floor

Go to the poem
"litany"
that may touch you
as it did us

---

RALPH:

Thanks for the article although Jackson Pollock is spelled 'Pollack' in your article. The correct spelling is Pollock and I thought you would want to know so you could edit the article.

Great article though, thanks again!

--- Tina Louise Weber
tinalouiseweber@msn.com

Go the dutifully corrected
article

---

please.

there must be a way to help these people.

how can one person put a stop to this madness. we got to find away to put and end to these death toll. maybe if we can creat more jobs in there homeland so they don't have to rist there lives tryin to get here.

we must find away to stop this.

--- arzur@bellsouth.net