The Review of Arts, Literature,
Philosophy and the Humanities

www.ralphmag.org

  Number 208

Early Winter 2010

NEW REVIEWS
A Gift of Angels
"The Mission San Xavier
del Bac is peopled with
53 saints, 171 angels,
hordes of pilgrims, and
two golden smiling lions."

The Poets Laureate Anthology
"Oh, you want praise and
recognition and above all money.
But if that was your true motive,
you would have done something else."

Ghost Light
"'What is marriage,' he says,
'but the final admission
that one's parents were right?
It is the dreariest way imaginable
for society to regulate
the natural impulse.'"

The Daring Spectacle
"It will prove to be a bigger
and more lucrative drug than
Viagra and Prozac and Ambien
combined and shaken and stirred
and pumped straight into
your eyeball."

The Making of Modern Nevada
"Nevada was the only state
to welcome divorcees to
its bleak deserts and
gambling tables and
boxing matches.
It reduced
the time of penance
to three months,
later to six weeks."

The Wesleyan Anthology
Of Science Fiction

"In Philip Dick's story
he had actually gone to Mars
as an Agent for a government
CIA-style organization.
The false memory
implant goes awry,
because it had been implanted
atop another even more
improbable memory."

Killer Crónicas
"If you start reading
Killer Crónicas
and don't get it,
you should go back to studying ESL,
or beginning Spanish,
so you can profit from
the double whammy
that is hidden
in both idioms."

Daring Steps
"At a certain point
you will see that the deity
to be meditated upon,
the mantra to be recited,
are just concepts,
mere contributions
of the mind."

Breathing, In Dust
"When the tracks rumble and spit,
you'll actually see the rails leaping into the air,
and slapping down into the earth.
Dust will fly into your eyes."

Great Reviews of the Past
The Many Lives of Noah Greenberg
"The conjunction of Left politics,
the shop floor, banana boats,
and the Early Music revival
tickles one's sensibility;
they have, I think,
deeper connections than
the author himself realizes."


LETTERS
Ram Dass' Still Here
The 3rd Ave. El --- Part II

MORE LETTERS
DADA
"Starfish"
Karl Marx

EVEN MORE LETTERS
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Gelatin
Free Book Reviews
Language Imperialism
of English

YET EVEN MORE LETTERS
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Deaf and dont hear and suffering


ARTICLE
Great Articles of the Past
Sin Nombre

"She has eyes bigger than my own,
skin of fine mahogany,
a nose they used to call 'button'
and a mouth given to
much smiling and
little crying."


READINGS
Saturn
"Its milk-white hue inevitably
arouses associations with
tripe, dead gray matter,
vulnerable organs hidden from sight,
loathsome diseases, test tubes,
laboratory specimens, catarrh, rheum,
ectoplasm, melancholy shades,
morbid phenomena, incuba and
succuba, war, sterility, anæmia."

At the BBC
"India is listening now.
Australia. New Zealand.
Places where it is
night-time or sweltering noon.
Storm-beaten islands. Ships.
And some will never have
heard a play in the whole
of their lives."


POETRY
I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee
"All the whales lived in the sea,
In calm beneath the troubled glass,
Until the needle drew their blood.
I see her standing in the hall,
Where the mirrors lashed to blood and foam
And the black flukes of agony
Beat at the air till the light blows out."

The Girl Upstairs
Vibrator

"The girl upstairs has begun once more to cry.
Her tears won't have the wild momentum of a childs.
They're regular, rhythmic; actually it's kind of soothing
to hear her sob. Outside the rising wind
rumbles the bins and makes the drinkers shout."


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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T H E  F A C T S
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Submitting Reviews
Suggestions for would-be reviewers --- and payment schedule.
History
RALPH didn't spring full-blown from the brows of the gods:
     We've been around (in different guises) for over thirty years.     
The Fessenden Fund
Describing the good works of RALPH's official godparent
Behind the Scenes

The Faces of Those Who Make Up the Face of RALPH
Copyright Notice
The Reginald A. Fessenden Educational Fund, Inc.
Hits
10,000 - 20,000 Daily Hits
200,000+ Page Hits a Month

Lolita Lark, Editor-In-Chief
Post Office Box 16719
San Diego CA 92176

lolitalark@yahoo.com


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