The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities www.ralphmag.org   Number 244 Early Winter 2013

Fifteen Stars
In our General Index
we give stars to the most
intriguing, enlightening, amiable and
enjoyable books received each month.
Here are more than a dozen of our favorites.

NEW TITLES
Wm & H'ry
"No man lives in the external truth,
among salts and acids,
but in the warm
phantasmagoric chamber
of his brain,
with the painted windows
and the storied walls."

Civil Wars
"Life is shock therapy enough.
Better than such drastic measures,
I could simply persuade myself
that this is a good thing.
After awhile, the tinnitus can seem
to be the noise that time makes."

Lines in Long Array
"Mr. abraham lincoln
I wont to knw sir if you please
whether I can have my son relest
from the arme he is all the subport
I have now      his father is Dead
and his brother that wase all
the help I had     he has bean wonded
twise he has not had nothing to send me yet
now I am old and my head is blossaming
for the grave and if you dou I hope
the lord will bless you and me."

The Science of Herself
"I read online a statement that
we shouldn't be surprised that Americans
are OK with torturing foreign prisoners,
because apparently we are OK with
the torturing of American children,
as long as it happens overseas."

The Faithful Scribe
"Author Mufti has the pride of a lofty lineage.
But he also has --- as a reporter ---
come to become intimately knowledgeable about
the other side: that he is part
of a country where extremists have taken
their religious teachings to unconscionable extremes."

Tales of Nocturnal Wildlife Expeditions
"I'm not sure we should be eating
an endangered species ...
Why are they on the menu?"
The waitress responded,
"Oh, that's okay, we only serve
those that are already dead."

Three Women in a Mirror
"Her lovely, open face turned
to the light, savoring every moment.
When she was tied to the stake, she was radiant.
Unexpected thoughts wafted from her peaceful self:
they said that she loved life,
that she loved pain as much as pleasure,
that she was not afraid of fear, and that she also loved death."

Duran Duran
"It was as if the entire universe
was being funneled into the
front living room of our house ...
and it went on twenty-four hours a day,
every day of the week.
A room that measured 8 by 12 feet
had become a space of infinite size."

Great Reviews of the Past
Shooting Under Fire
"I went to war and
photographed other people's wars,
but when I came away from them
I needed to rehabilitate myself.
I don't believe you can go to war
as a photographer without
some compassion in you."

Another Great Review of the Past
The English Is Coming!
"More people speak English
in China and in India
than in America, and
there is an ATM
in Vatican City
that operates solely
in Latin."

LETTERS
The New Folio
Getting Locked in the Looney Ward

MORE LETTERS
STOP CONTACTING THOSE PEOPLE

EVEN MORE LETTERS
There'll Always Be an England
Cat-on-Shoulder Division

ARTICLES
The Evening the World Ended
"His pattern has been strict abstinence
for periods of several months
ended by a Homeric bender.
It is amazing that George's health holds up
in the face of year after year of this abuse;
I have persuaded him to revise his will so that
his body is left to the Medical School for scientific study."

Great Articles of the Past
God Vs. Gawd
"At one time He liked poor people
but that was before they decided to improve the Bible
to make it more modern and up-to-date.
Nowadays poor people mostly cheat on welfare,
get pregnant without getting married,
and don't tune in to the 700 Club enough."

READINGS
The House Is Sleeping
"ln the house,
the windows are sleeping,
the furniture is sleeping,
the refrigerator is sleeping,
a plug dangling from its shoulder.
The doors are sleeping:
beautiful, solid, heavy doors.
Krustev is sleeping,
hung on the wall."

A Dying Wife
"Krustev shuddered and suddenly imagined how,
if he put his ear to his wife's body,
he would hear the sea roaring inside her,
as inside a shell.
She really was a shell,
the form of a living creature,
emptied of her soft, slimy,
and slithering substance,
at once alluring and repellent."

POETRY
Two by David R. Slavitt
Salida de Emergencia
"Every day, the world comes to an end
and what shall we do unless we have prepared
escarole, radicchio, red leaf lettuce,
and chives with which to nourish our faint spirits?"
Raimon de Roussilon
"The sweet love song in his ears was bitter, harsh,
in other words a trobar brau, to which
he wanted to respond in a brutal way
beyond mere versification. He killed
the presumptuous and also indiscreet
Guillem. But that was not yet a work of art."

OUR NEW BOOK
(Hot Off the Press)
The Noisiest Book Review in the Known World
has just been published.
It contains 200 or so of what we believe
to be the best articles, readings, reviews and poems
from this magazine from our first years to now.
Here you will find all necessary information
on ordering this two-volume set
which one critic called "magic."

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"

SUBSCRIBE
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