R A L P H The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities Volume
XXXV, Number 2 Very Late Spring 2003 |
REVIEWS
Sun At Midnight
Blood of Victory
Great Reviews of the Past
BRIEF REVIEWS
ARTICLES
READINGS Important Documents about the Roumanian Oil Fields
Great Readings of the Past
POETRY
LETTERS THE OFFICIAL RALPH
GENERAL INDEX
A PITHY SAMPLE
SUBSCRIBE
NEW LISTINGS
"Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka,
The Politics of Poverty in Calcutta, and
Waiting for an Angel.
The Age of Gold
"When nominated governor of California,
Leland Stanford, the founder of the august university
that today bears his name, said,
I prefer white citizens to any other class or race.
I prefer the white man to the negro
as an inhabitant of our country."
"This is a man troubled by losing his guru,
but he is also a man troubled by inchoate writing.
He shrieks, sobs, cries, wails, and moans
to such a point that this reader was tempted
to dump the whole mess into the office shredder,
spend a few soothing hours recuperating
with something intellectual:
The Readers' Digest, USA Today,
The National Enquirer, Hustler."
"I got caught up in this one about page two,
and by page fifty I was rationing myself:
we're going to make this one last for a week.
But then I blew it. An evening of margaritas,
and there it was, on my bed-table,
I'll just take a peek ...
and I threw out the rationing card."
Calamus
Lovers:
Walt Whitman's
Working Class
Camerados
Also Agent Orange,
Nuclear War for Kids, and
How to Create Guilt
During Psychotherapy
Personal Journeys to Spiritual Truth,
Radical Compassion and the Poor of Portland, and
Mary F. K. Fisher
Great Articles of the Past
Ninety-Year-Old Mother Makes Killing on Stocks
Part I
"Mother comes to me
in my dreams
and tells me what stocks to buy.
Stop laughing.
I don't make this up."
Part II
"My sister tells me that as Mother lay dying
she sat up in bed, thinking, perhaps,
she was before one of her classes,
and delivered an extemporaneous speech
on her investment policy
to the nonplused nurses, doctors
and family members."
Husbands Eaten By Ferocious Tigers
"I have to cook for my only husband,
the one who gets eaten every day by a man-eating tiger
while I wait at this station, parched and dusty,
while I lose my breath on the trains,
and walk through the muddy fields.
He dies every day as I traverse this space.
It is a terrible death
for the tiger is always so hungry."
"I had to give up my radio, last month,
and one does miss it terribly. But you wouldn't want
Jews having radios, would you.
We are also forbidden servants, and, lately,
there's talk about housing."
Thoreau the Buddhist
"I grew in those seasons
like corn in the night,
and they were far better
than the work of the hands would have been.
They were not time subtracted from my life,
but so much over and above my usual allowance.
I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation
and the forsaking of works."
Two by Michael Craig
"The earth shifts a little on its axle.
And birds take turns
stuffing their eggs into a hole in our wall."
Two More by Michael Craig
"The glass doors opened.
Someone removed my canvas brassiere and I stepped gently out
into the deafening orchard."
Anorexia,
Noah Greenberg,
The Anatomy of Miracles and
A Possible Legal Brouhaha at RALPH
Paradox-of-the-Month
A complete list of all books reviewed in RALPH,
arranged by title, including author, subject, and publisher,
plus a listing of all readings, articles and poems
that have appeared since 1994.
of our most notorious reviews
as collected in the hard-copy
"FOLIO"
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
Submitting Books The best way to get books to RALPH for review. Submitting Reviews Suggestions for would-be reviewers --- and payment schedule. History RALPH didn't spring full-blown from the brows of the gods: We've been around (in different guises) for over twenty-five years. The Fessenden Fund Describing the good works of RALPH's official godparent |
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