Twelve Hits
Here are a dozen poems,
readings, articles or reviews
that continue to receive
the most hits and (presumably)
the ongoing affection of our readers.

NEW REVIEWS
Jack London
Photographer
"He seems a merry sort,
and we must mourn a good soul
cut down so young,
to be remembered, perhaps,
alongside Mozart, Keats,
Purcell, Schubert and Kit Marlowe."

Accidental Historian
"We could see the nation-states
of Florida and Texas stuck
off there by themselves with
the likes of George and Jeb Bush
running them (badly),
leaving the rest of us blissedly
alone with our quirks and our freedoms."

An Island in the Sky
"This part of Texas
has been bewitched
by the usual Lone Star
poltroons and vandals."

from unwritten histories
"Sometimes I see the gap
between your life and my death
where there is room enough for both
especially in january."

Departures
"As I talked to him,
I invented myself.
I don't mean that I lied;
I made myself into a story.
I naturalized myself in the language
that was still
thick on my tongue."

Deaf in DC
"He has to learn
such niceties as
making his own bed,
figuring out the meaning
of 'garage sales'
(where they don't sell garages),
and 'yard sales,'
(where they don't sell yards)."

Aaaw to Zzzzzd
"In the laughter department, there's
the laughing gull's haa-haa-haa-haa
the yellow-billed loon's ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
the willet's ha-ha-ha ha-ha-ha ---
and the hahahahahaha of the common loon.
Whereas the yellow-throated vireo
merely mutters heh heh heh."

Lester Higata's 20th Century
"Hamby is a hell of a story-teller,
got to me on page one,
right at the beginning
(there at the end),
and scarcely let me go
until we got to the end ...
which was the beginning."

Picture for Women
"It is, indeed, nothing but
a barren room with naked lightbulbs,
the shade of a young man
on one side --- holding a trip
for the camera which is in the center ---
with a passive young lady off there to the left."

Great Reviews of the Past
Frontiers of Heaven
"We found ourselves wanting
to be right there with him,
on those noisy cold busses,
in those donkey carts,
on those endless trains."

LETTERS
H. L. Mencken

MORE LETTERS
Daguerrotypes
Dogwalkers

EVEN MORE LETTERS
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Diploma
Life in Thailand

YET EVEN MORE LETTERS
Pat Robertson

ARTICLES
Geolocating Tweets
"The user's manual that
came with my cell phone
was a compact paperback
the size of Thomas Mann's
The Magic Mountain
if it had been set in type
large enough to read."

READINGS
One Day After Saturday
"'Señora, people are saying
that the Father has gone crazy
in the pulpit!'
The widow turned a not characteristically
withered and bitter face toward the door.
'He's been crazy for at least
five years,' she said."

The Tiger
"One could just as easily say:
this is what you get when
you pair the agility and appetites
of a cat with the mass
of an industrial refrigerator."

POETRY
not exactly a poem
"I no longer write poems
I talk to the daughter of the dead miner
or lick anthracite breasts
with the tip or my tongue
or drink black tea
laced with bergamot."

star wars
"life in the full moon is a flood seas of blood mountains of chocolate
adrenaline agraphia amnesia
thinking like this I understand the vacation nears its end
I close out my account of summer when I get my interest
I'll call you from another life
by braille telephone."

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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