REVIEWS
We offer here a dozen reviews from
the more than 4,000 online that
should knock your eyes out
(or your socks off).

ARTICLES
The 400 articles
we've published since 1995
explore a world we believe to be
ignored by other media.
Here are links to twelve
that may well be
our most lapidary.

READINGS
Here are a dozen readings ---
mostly drawn from books under review ---
passages that will shed further light on their subject,
yet ones that can stand as great literature
on their own.

POEMS
Each issue features two or more new poems,
a different breed than those appearing in the
old and tired and hoary literary journals.
Out of over 600 we've published online,
here are a few that managed
to stay around long after
the sell-by date.

LETTERS
Over these many years,
we have received the usual salty letters of
complaint and vituperation, as well as
you're-mad ... and we-love-you.
Here is a rich selection of those
that have made our day.

NEW TITLES
Those Angry Days
"When the Japanese attacked us, and
when their Axis Allies in Europe
declared war on us,
this nation was better prepared,
spiritually as well as militarily,
than it had ever been for any war
in our history."

The Skin
"It is a literary work
whose aesthetic intention is so strong,
so apparent, that the sensitive reader automatically
excludes it from the context of accounts
brought to bear by historians,
journalists, political analysts, memoirists."

Behind the Beautiful Forevers
"When I was a kid
one of the favorites on radio
was the Mills Brothers singing
Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall
(But Too Much Has Fallen in Mine.)
Here, we are awash
in rain, tears, sewage, blood,
snot, sweat and smegma.
Man the bilges!"

Wardy Forty
"In the beginning,
no one knew anything.
Even my dad thought that he
was suffering from alcoholism,
or God knows what.
Woody didn't know that
what he had was genetic."

Conditions of Hospitality
"To share food and offer gifts to a stranger
was considered the highest form of civilization.
By contrast, a monster like Cyclops
preferred to devour his guests."

LETTERS
On Our 250th Issue

MORE LETTERS
Angry Letters
From the Past

ARTICLE
A Letter
From the Department of Human Services
Did you ever get a letter from the IRS?
Your heart sinks and you're afraid
to open the envelope, right? Because you
automatically assume that whatever
the IRS wants from you,
it ain't good."

READINGS
Eating the Fish-Girl
"In the middle of the tray was a little girl,
or something that resembled a little girl.
She lay face upwards on a bed of green lettuce leaves,
encircled by a large wreath of pink coral stems.
Her eyes were open, her lips half closed;
and she was gazing with an expression of wonderment
at Luca Giordano's painting of the
'Triumph of Venus'
which adorned the ceiling."

POETRY
Precision
"The day you flew in perfect arc
from your motorcycle was the same day
I broke the perfect formation of your women
at the railing, leaving behind
your grandmother and mother, to run
and jump the fence."

OUR NEW BOOK
(Still Hot Off the Press)
The Noisiest Book Review in the Known World
was published last year. It contains 200 or so
of what we believe to be the best articles, readings,
reviews and poems from this magazine ---
from our very first years to now. Here you will find
all necessary information for 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"

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