NEW REVIEWS
The World's Strangest Animals
"Oh, the cuckoo, she's a pretty bird,
Lord, she warbles as she flies;
She'll never say cuckoo
Till the fourth day of July."

Packing for Mars
"Here is Charlie Duke
driving on the moon,
the high point of his life,
as a pair of oddly named
craters come into view:
I can see Wreck and Trap
and Orange Juice."

No Place Like Home
"If these twenty-five essays
are typical of what
you can expect in
the Western Life
you'd better stay back in
Newark, or Cleveland, or
god knows, New Orleans."

One Page at a Time
"Well, well,
if it isn't the great writer,
Ernest Hemingway,
bringing home the great writer,
James Joyce,
dead drunk."

Hitch-22
"His contemporaries of
the Anglo-American baby-boomer Left
typically hold a sub-literate,
schematic picture of World War II
as something vague and pre-historic,
like the Trojan War,
the voyages of Columbus,
or the origin of Spider-Man."

Where Did You Go?
"You were on top.
You placed a knee in each
of the underdog's elbows,
as you sat on his stomach.
You beat,
alternately with each clenched fist,
on his breast bone
until he cried or
you were tired, or
somebody came along."

Gay Bar
"At the end of the 1960s
homosexual sex was still illegal
in every state but Illinois.
It was a crime
punishable by castration
in seven states."

Dead End Gene Pool
"What the hell
was happening to everyone?
My grandfather was in diapers
and couldn't speak,
my grandmother was becoming
a caricature of a drunk,
my mother was getting fat."

When the Danube Ran Red
"He said 'Sachertorte,'
and he made a funny face,
'big and dark brown,
filled with strawberry preserves.'
'Cherry strudel,' I said, unable to continue."

Great Reviews of the Past
Whales
"The Japanese, through clever
manipulation of genes,
have bred the gray whale
down to aquarium size.
You and I can purchase
a pair of these miniature whales,
each about six inches long,
who, in our very living rooms,
will blow their little spouts and,
once properly trained,
breach as much as
a foot in the air."

LETTERS
Jung, Freud and
Milton Erickson

MORE LETTERS
Wokking the Dog
Slugs & Christopher Hitchens

EVEN MORE LETTERS
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Young Footballers
Dropping a Massage

YET EVEN MORE LETTERS
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Yours Fairly Fried

ARTICLE
[Press Release of the Month]
Where Is Gogol When We Need Him?
"After 10 years of
stealing coats from London pubs,
guerrilla artist Mike Ballard
will seek redemption by
displaying and returning
the hijacked items."

READINGS
Mental Health in Maine
"It was the first time
I'd been Downeast
in the winter,
and I really got a feel for why
Maine has the highest rate of alcoholism
and child pornography
in the country."

Great Readings of the Past
Life on a Chicken Ranch
"I, feeling like a cross
between a boll weevil and a slut
took a large cup of hot coffee,
a hot water bottle,
a cigarette and a magazine and
went back to bed.
Then, from six-thirty until nine or so,
I luxuriated in breaking
the old mountain tradition
that a decent woman is
in bed only between
the hours of 7 P.M. and 4 A.M.
unless she is
in labor or dead."

POETRY
Night Rain
"My wife asks, upon rising, if I heard it coming down hard last night, the rain.
And I say I did not, though I saw, upon rising, the beads, the pearls of rain left
like dolphins' teeth, like little worlds along the eaves."

The Spider Speaks
"Mother warned me
I would wake one dawn
to a sun no longer yellow,
to an expanse of blue,
no proper word
to name it. Weaving
the patterned threads
of my life, each day..."

Work
"I won't look at her. Nude
On a hammock among elephant ears
& ferns, a pitcher of lemonade
Sweating like our skin."

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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