Great Reviews of the Past
The Rise and Fall of Synanon
"He spouted Zen, Lao T'se,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, and S. I. Hayakawa.
He built a working institution in record time,
and got the attention of prison authorities, legislators
and the police."

BRIEF REVIEWS
The Novels of Andreï  Makine
The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme
"When they brought her a glass of water,
the adventuress, parched with thirst,
hurled herself upon it
and declared, with a voluptuous sigh:
Such a shame this is not a sin!"

Requiem for a Lost Empire
"The village
had been scoured by so many waves of
armed men, Reds, Whites, anarchists,
bandits pure and simple, and then Reds again,
by so many lootings,
fires, and deaths, that the villagers
were no longer surprised at anything."

LETTERS
Cryptic Letter of the Week
Confessions of a
Cataract Operator
The Dream of Death
Ta Moko & Tin Boxes

ARTICLE
Barry Corbet
Part I
"He was hardly a banker.
A master editor and filmmaker and writer.
Even, perhaps, a master in the Eastern sense.
He had spent several years with one of
the most famed teachers of Tibetan Buddhism
in America, Chogyam Trungpa."

Part II
"'You know what the Tibetan Buddhists
say about death.'
'No.'
'They call it
The dream at the end of time.'"

READINGS
Pity, Terror and Death
"A long fine needle of
the shivered glass pierced her heart.
She died on the instant.
The reporter called it a tragic death.
It is not. It is remote from
the terror and pity according to
the terms of my definitions."

My Dearest Dust
"Even though
my interest in English literature was great,
the material I was given access to
scarcely included four of the poets
who have given me the greatest pleasure
in my later years: John Donne,
John Clare, Walter de la Mare, and
Edward Thomas."

POETRY
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
"It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs."

Clock-O'-Clay
"In the cowslip pips I lie,
Hidden from the buzzing fly,
While green grass beneath me lies,
Pearled with dew like fishes' eyes,
Here I lie, a clock-o'-clay,
Waiting for the time o' day."

THE OFFICIAL RALPH
Paradox-of-the-Month

GENERAL INDEX
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.

A PITHY SAMPLE
of our most notorious reviews
as collected in the hard-copy
"FOLIO"

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