NEW TITLES
St. Paul's Architecture
"The authors deserve
our sincere thanks for
giving us a book that is
sure to make readers
fall in love with
the American Baroque,
disdain the modernists
with their throw-back
to the fortress architecture
of the Early Normans."

Wu Wei
"I know what I must look like right now
standing in front of Morrison Books
on 12th and Hoyt, unemployed, no hat on, rain-dripping
off my chin, the back of my head, but I don't mind."

Sartoris
"It must be there from the very start,
not be something one is going to whip up
just because one wants to write,
but that has to be there
because it is already there;
and if we think we can do it
without that magic,
then we are wrong, are fools who
need not apply."

The Russian Anarchists
"Grey are the
passing days.
One by one
the embers of hope
have died out.
Terror and despotism
have crushed the life
born in October.
The slogans of the
Revolution are forsworn,
its ideals stifled
in the blood
of the people."

Arresting Time
"Nothing is more
hateful to me
than photographs
sugar-coated with
gimmicks, posts,
and false effects.
Therefore, let me
speak the truth
in all honesty
about our age
and the people of our age."

Ringside Seat to a Revolution
"The Mutual Film Company
came to El Paso to make
The Life of General Villa ---
with its star under contract:
Pancho Villa."

Great Reviews of the Past
Stiff
"I've never seen a heart beating.
I had no idea they moved so much.
The thing is going wild in there.
It's a mixing-machine part,
a stoat squirming in its burrow,
an alien life form that's
just won a Pontiac on
'The Price Is Right.'"

BRIEF REVIEWS
Superbugs
Written Lives
The Last Town on Earth
When I Was Elena
Human Traces
Clouds

LETTERS
The Nature-Friendly Garden
Divine Intervention in the RALPH Mailroom
MORE LETTERS
Maori Moko
The Middle East "Holy War"
A Round-Heeled Woman
EVEN MORE LETTERS
A Chinese Letter

ARTICLES
The Old and the Detached
"I think
we should pause here and
give tribute to that army
of unsung heroes: that is,
geezers who find themselves
sitting in an uncomfortable chair
in a darkened room as
a doctor prepares to stick a ten-
or fifteen-inch
horse-needle
directly into
one of
their orbs."

READINGS
The End of Yellow Fever
"The Spanish volunteers
were offered $100 in gold
and immunity certificates that
entitled them to wages twice
those of a nonimmune.
If they got the disease,
they were promised $250
and the 'best treatment'
by American doctors and nurses
although no treatment
had any effect on the disease
and Reed knew it."

The Dead Cat
"He committed suicide
two years ago.
Or rather, as he feared,
he committed suicide
and survived
his own death.
He became two identical persons ---
identical except one was dead,
and the other alive."

POETRY
Companion to a Loon
"Listen bird, I'm past making death sad.
The tide has no time for wakes
or tragedies. We're either coming in
or going out. It's like that,
the soul for a while boxed up
in feathers or this frail
human body of mine."

All the Signs Are Here
"Good-bye to receding gums,
the waste of despair,
old loves chewed on
way too long.
Clouds that make themselves up
over and over
as if change is all that's permanent.
There's nothing sad here."

THE OFFICIAL RALPH
Paradox-of-the-Month

GENERAL INDEX
All the back-issues of RALPH,
including titles of books under review,
along with author, subject, and publisher,
plus links to readings, articles, and poems
that have appeared on-line
since 1994.

A PITHY SAMPLE
of our most notorious reviews
as collected in the hard-copy
"FOLIO"

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