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
Ghost Light The Daring Spectacle
The Making of Modern Nevada
The Wesleyan Anthology
Killer Crónicas Daring Steps
Breathing, In Dust
Great Reviews of the Past
LETTERS
"Oh, you want praise and
recognition and above all money.
But if that was your true motive,
you would have done something else."
"'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.'"
"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."
"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."
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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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."
Ram Dass' Still Here
The 3rd Ave. El --- Part II
MORE LETTERS EVEN MORE LETTERS
DADA
"Starfish"
Karl Marx
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 At the BBC
POETRY
The Girl Upstairs THE OFFICIAL RALPH
GENERAL INDEX
A PITHY SAMPLE
SUBSCRIBE
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."
"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."
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."
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."
Paradox-of-the-Month
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.
of our most notorious reviews
as collected in the hard-copy
"FOLIO"
Help perpetuate honest, noisy, pesky book reviews.
With your $25 subscription, you get
a free copy of one or more of the titles from
Mho & Mho Works
Submitting Books The best way to get books to RALPH for review. 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 |
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