Fifteen from Fourteen
In our General Index
we give stars to those books
that our reviewers find to be most compelling.
Here more than a dozen from 2014
that brought stars to our eyes.

NEW TITLES
World War One in 100 Objects
"If you want to find the old battalion,
I know where they are
They're hanging on the old barbed wire,
I've seen 'em, I've seen 'em,
hanging on the old barbed wire.
I've seen 'em, I've seen 'em,
hanging on the old barbed wire."

'Til the Well Runs Dry
"You payin' this kinda money to go way into de bush for some gal?
You mad? I not gon' more than t'ree miles to find nobody!
You're a good-lookin' fella, too. What you does need a country gal livin'
behin' God back to rub against for? You can't get no nice Indian
girl in Tunapuna to make some anchar and some dhal puri for you?
You spendin' up up your money on some red red, country, bookie gal?"

The Legs of Izolda Morgan
"30,000 kopies of the phuturist maniphesto ---
distributed around poland over forteen daze.
gowged with this nife in the gutt,
the slumbering kattel of polish art began to holler.
the woond pyooked up
the lava of phuturism. "

Island of a Thousand Mirrors
"I tried to move on to a place in
this book that was a little less barbaric.
But it was not so simple because our author
has a rather menacing case of
Repetitive Motion Disorder
(also known as Occupational Overuse Syndrome).
so we get to go through the ghastly rape scene three times."

Ecodeviance
"I would show photographs
of myself to strangers and ask,
'EXCUSE ME, have you seen this person?'
Sometimes there was confusion,
'ISN'T THAT YOU?' I would reply, 'No, many people
think that I look like HER,
but have you seen HER?'"

This Life
"That was when I discovered for the first time
how much you could see and hear if you reminded silent and withdrew,
if you watched and listened and did not allow a single word or gesture to escape you;
it was then, as I moved unnoticed among the funeral-goers with the coffee,
that, without realizing it, I learned how to live the rest of my life.

The Unloved
"The unloved watch the loved
perform the small rituals of their loving.
At night they hear the cries of the loved
from their solitary beds.
In the morning they watch the loved curiously."

Great Reviews of the Past
Kinsey
"Whenever any of the board members of
the Rockefeller Foundation visited with him
in New York or Bloomington,
Kinsey asked for, and almost always got,
their intimate, personal sexual histories."

Great Folios of the Past
Late Summer 2011
Every few months, we put out a "Folio" ---
a collection of reviews, poems and readings
from the last year that we favor the most.
Some of these turn up again and again
on our server's list of sites most favored by our readers ---
ones that are called up repeatedly over the years.
This particular one is at the top of the heap,
with Whales, Mark Twain, Life on a Chicken Ranch, Las Vegas,
Broadcasting at the BBC and American Poet Laureates among others.

LETTERS
Global Warming and China and India

MORE LETTERS
Evil Aliens

ARTICLES
The Veliki Knyaz
An Episode in Russian History
"He, the pious one, with a godly wisdom
accused the crafty men of their cunning and dishonourable proceedings,
of departing from the light of true worship and
giving themselves up to Latinism."

Great Articles from the Past
Jean Genet and the Black Panthers
"I did not write my books
for the liberation of the homosexual.
I wrote my books for another reason altogether ---
out of a taste for words,
out of a taste for commas,
even punctuation,
out of a taste for the sentence."

READINGS
How Writers Lose Their Style
"'With this tape,' he said, 'we can request the computer to supply us
with any information we like about your ideolect.'
'Come again?' I said. 'Your own special, distinctive,
unique way of using the English language.
What's your favorite word?' 'My favorite word?
I don't have one.' 'Oh yes you do,' he said "

Great Readings from the Past
The Zen Monks and
The Governor
"So the kitchen master put the broom between his legs and ---
ppssheewww!! --- flew off into the sky!
He circled the temple once and landed in front of the governor.
The governor couldn't believe his eyes ---
the monk had really flown through the air!
The governor rubbed his hands together and said,
Ahhhh. I must have this broom!'"

Maps and the Bibles of the Poor
"Perhaps the most popular form of
this kind of block printing of text and image
had been in the form of the
Biblia Pauperum, or 'Bibles of the Poor.'
Printers in this woodcut sense preceded typographic printers,
though by just how long a period it is not easy to establish,
because these cheap and popular prints --- despised by the learned ---
were not preserved any more than are
the comic books of today."

POETRY
Ice Age
"it was snowing left and right
soggy mittens clouds of sawdust
we filled the shed mother came out
saint anne came down from heaven
and said I'll take just a splinter
for kindling saint anthony said
take several you can see how much
we have cut"

The Lice Seekers
"Before a casement window they sit the child down,
a window open wide to where the azure air
bathes a tangle of flowers, and upon his tousled crown
their terrible, fine fingers move with magical care."

OUR NEW TITLE
The Vivisection Mambo
is to be published early this summer.
It consists of 121 poems
drawn from the newly-discovered,
newly-crowned
Neo-Realist School of poets,
many reviewed in this magazine
for the first time

OUR RECENT 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 of this magazine ---
from our very first years to now.
Here you will find all necessary information
on ordering this classic two-volume set,
which recently received the rare and
highly regarded Kirkus star.

THE OFFICIAL RALPH
Paradox-of-the-Month

GENERAL INDEX
All the back-issues of RALPH,
with all titles of books under review,
complete with author, subject, and publisher,
plus links to all 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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