NEW TITLES
Twentieth Century United States Photographers
"William Wegman,
the funny-dog man appears ---
his Weimaraner Man Ray in suit
is one of the cleverest shots ---
but where is the best
human/animal photographer
of them all, Weegee?
Even the Huntington buys old Weegees."

Help Your Dog Fight Cancer
"She doesn't tell us
how much her dog's health-care
cost in his last years,
but we can guess that
with what she spent,
an honorable international foundation
could have provided a whole new world
for some poor child in Kenya, India,
Brazil, Pakistan, or Mexico."

Night Haunts
"The mini-cab drivers,
though they affect to have
heard everything before,
get sucked in by these tales.
They move for a small while,
from being mere people-ferriers
to fellow travellers.
They become passengers,
prurient and complicit."

Hobsbawm on Empire
"It indicates a
growing crises within American society,
which finds expression in the most profound
political and cultural division
within that country since
the Civil War."

Pioneers of Balinese Painting
"For all his effort
on behalf of art and truth,
all Bonnet got was a kick-in-the-pants ---
the Japanese interred him
in Sulawesi starting in 1942,
and the Indonesian government
booted him out
in 1958."

Living Abroad in China
"Going to China
to make a living
sounds about as interesting as
growing up in Butte, Montana,
or landing a job at Office Depot, or
joining the U. S. Army to play
golf in the Green Zone."

Wild Edges
"He recalls
an unspoilt New Jersey,
but all I can remember
are warehouses, metal fences,
corrugated steel sheds, storage tanks,
blocks, bridges, general drudge,
and what we used to call
'high-tension' lines."

Great Reviews of the Past
Ants
"There are people out there,
like Deborah Gordon,
who apparently can't get enough of them.
She goes out in the Sonoran Desert
all hours of the day
(120 degrees;
average windspeed, 25 knots)
to observe the red harvester ant,
Pogonomyrmex barbatus.
What she is trying to figure out is
how the little buggers work."

BRIEF REVIEWS
Ax Handle Saturday
Impressions of the East
(The Starr Library)
Ten Books that Screwed Up the World

LETTERS
Maxine Kumin and
A Latin King

MORE LETTERS
Dugustus Goop II
X. J. Kennedy

EVEN MORE LETTERS
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Water Closets

YET EVEN MORE LETTERS
A Great Old Collection of
Angry Letters to RALPH

ARTICLES
The Case of the Missing Video
"What comes next?
When I actually do rent a videotape next time,
will I try to play it in the toaster?
Will I try to cook tomorrow's
breakfast sausages in one of
my computer ports?"

READINGS
Great Readings
Over the past years,
in each issue we have offered
two or three readings from
the best books under review.
Here are twelve
of our favorites.

POETRY
The Boys Are Not Refined
"the boys i mean are not refined
they cannot chat of that and this
they do not give a fart for art
they kill like you would take a piss"

A Youth Mowing
"There are four men mowing down by the Isar;
I can hear the swish of the scythe-strokes, four
Sharp breaths taken: yea, and I
Am sorry for what's in store.
The first man out of the four that's mowing
Is mine, I claim him once and for all."

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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