12 Hits from 2001
It was more peaceful
back then, ten years ago,
before the Fall, no?
Well ... perhaps not.

NEW REVIEWS
Death Is Not an Option
"When, later, Alma
confronts the boy,
he finally confesses to everything
that is happening to him:
I have a pet tiger at home."

Lightning
"We all like to know,
if possible, exactly
when we were born.
We prefer to be aware
of the numerical moment when
it all takes off."

Stieglitz Steichen Strand
"Paul Strand turns up too,
although with only 27 photographs,
compared to Steichen's 38
and Stieglitz's 53,
making one wonder if he
appears only because
his name begins with St."

The Tiger
"Humans, this tiger had discovered
(or perhaps had always known)
were as easy as dogs to locate and kill.
Now, a person stepping outside
to split a few sticks of kindling
might as well be ringing
a dinner bell."

Baghdad Sketches
"I used to lie awake and
admire the malignity of a smell
which could lie dormant all day
when one might escape it by going out,
and leaped upon one
as soon as one was safely imprisoned
in one's bedroom."

Reading with the Stars
"Public libraries have become
de facto daytime shelters
for the nation's street people
while librarians are increasingly
our unofficial social workers
for the homeless and
mentally disturbed."

Apollinaire's Bestiary
"Outside these homely verses,
there are Dufy's woodcuts.
They are thick, gorgeous ---
perfectly enclosed ---
sinuous and whimsical."

Crossing with the Virgin
"According to the writer,
the prey has no chance ...
there is more Border Patrol backup
than there are stars in the sky."

The Truth about Marie
"It occurs to me that this
is the most daunting horse-race
I've ever read about,
better than anything you'd see
at the Kentucky Derby or
Churchill Downs."

The Bell Jar
"Many feel the poignancy
that she herself came to know:
reaching the end of patience
with a melancholy-infected life."

Great Reviews of the Past
Bound and Gagged
"She has evidently
immersed herself enough
lurid literature to deliver
the message that
the reaction of most of us
(sneering, shutting our eyes,
calling the police)
means that we are missing
the vital truths that
pornography can give us."

LETTERS
Pen & Ink Press
Driving Instructors at RALPH

MORE LETTERS
The Rejection Slip Blues
Outdated RALPH
Kurt Vonnegut, A Life

EVEN MORE LETTERS
Letters We Never Finished Reading
600 Million U.S Dollars in Iraq

YET EVEN MORE LETTERS
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Are you DEAD?

FILM REVIEW
Transformers 3 / Trollhunter
"The basic theorem is that
there are several races of
giant extra-terrestrial robots
running around our galaxy,
and when not busy demolishing planets,
these robots hide out on earth
disguised as our own cars!"

READINGS
Concerning Smells
"True happiness, we consider,
is incompatible with
an inefficient drainage system.
It is one of those points on which
we differ most fundamentally from the East,
where happiness and sanitation are not held
to have any particular connection."

Samarra
"One of my ideas of happiness
is to sit on a river bank waiting for a ferry.
It is much pleasanter than dinner parties,
which are spoilt by the fact that
one has to think of more than
one thing at once."

POETRY
Daddy
There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

The Colossus
"Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.."

Woodcraft Manual for Boys
"I remember going to say goodnight to him
and him turning away so I'd get only cheek; tiny, indomitable whiskers,
their fierce determination. It is what I imagined it'd be like
to kiss an Indian warrior: earth."

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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