NEW TITLES
I Golfed Across Mongolia
"That I could
break a leg,
or get attacked and robbed.
Then at least I'd have a reason to quit.
I'd have a real, physical,
tangible reason to put an end
to this idiotic mission.
I wouldn't have to
anguish over the issue any more,
debating whether or not
to continue.
I'd have clarity."

The Painted Desert
"There were dinosaurs
who passed through here
and were nice enough to
leave their footprints behind,
over three hundred tracks in
various parts of the desert
(the tracks are so detailed that
one scientist estimated that
the beasts were moving
nineteen miles-per-hour)."

Facing Down Evil
"Probably 3 or 4 percent
of the population
are not burdened with conscience.
They have no social, no moral,
no ethical constraints.
They rob, rape, kidnap,
murder without a thought
to the human toll that
they leave in their wake."

Oil on the Brain
"At the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,
she asks one of the armed guards
what oil is. He says,
It smells bad.
And it comes out
of the ground. Hnff.
What more do you
need to know?"

Telling True Stories
"David Halberstam wants us to
have access to 'very good newspapers'
so we can be exposed to worthy journalism.
That includes, he says, the 'New York Times,'
the 'Wall Street Journal,'
the 'Los Angeles Times,'
the 'Washington Post' and, allo? ---
the 'St. Petersburg Times.'
Is this the 'St. Petersburg Times'
published there on the Gulf of Finland?"

Great Reviews of the Past
The Ice Palace that Melted Away
"Just before midnight
while delayed in Denver
on a cross-country Amtrak train,
she was shocked to see me
in my pajamas
in the dead of winter
washing our compartment's
filthy window from
the station platform. I was determined to see
the glory of the Rocky Mountains
the next morning through
clean windows."

BRIEF REVIEWS
An Alphabetical Life
Many Worlds in One
The Poetry of Harvey Shapiro

LETTERS
Jorie Graham
Aquiles Nazoa

MORE LETTERS
Apt. 301
Maori Tattooing

EVEN MORE LETTERS
Joachim Stempel
Barney Rosset
Samuel Pepy's Catamaran

YET EVEN MORE LETTERS
H. L. Mencken
Dr. Paul Nickel

ARTICLE
Flashlights
"I was certainly
the only second former (ninth grader)
who had read Anthony Adverse,
the Pulitzer Prize novel of 1933.
I read a lot; I wore glasses;
I had a German surname; I had dark hair;
maybe a lot of people thought I was Jewish.
But I wasn't Jewish.
I wasn't anything."

READINGS
The Friendly Spider Program
"First, however,
we were to pair off
and share our feelings and
experiences of spiders
with the person
sitting on our right.
Third on the list of
things I really don't like,
after spiders and football,
is sharing."

POETRY
From an Autobiography
"My mother,
when she saw me said, Why did God
take away my beautiful child and give me
this ugly baby instead. And she turned away,
not to touch me
for the first months of my life."

Great Poems of the Past
Poemas de Homero Aridjis
"I was born on the corner
of Poverty and Injustice
my parents were Dignity
and Maybe-Tomorrow
always at the palace gates
of Madame Rectitude."

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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