NEW TITLES
Recent Art and Photography Books
Penguins of the World
"Polar exploration is
at once the cleanest and most
isolated way of having
a bad time which has been devised.
It is the only form of adventure
in which you put on
your clothes at Michaelmas
and keep them on
until Christmas."

Art from Fort Marion
"Pratt had them paint, draw,
and make pottery and drums.
He made it possible for them to sell
their art to the tourists who
flocked to look at 'real Indians.'"

Birds
"The chronological arrangement
shows why John James Audubon
was so distinctive.
In sharp contrast to
those who came before him,
his drawings had life,
such life."

Buildings for Tomorrow
"Structures like butterflies,
arcs with spines,
pylons with little squiggly
cement worms behind them,
fat globules set
at the edge of the sea."

Landscape of Slavery
"Then they rize
off the ground and
flew back to Africa.
Nobody ever saw em no more.
My grandmother see that
with her own eyes.
Anytime they wanted
they would fly back
to Africa."

E. O. Hoppé's Amerika
"Although there are touches of
haunting despair in
many of these shots,
we doubt that Hoppé's photographs
imply the putative terror
of the imagination,
that of his contemporary
Franz Kafka."

A Texas Journey
"There are some folks who still like to travel
To see what they have over there.
But when they go look, it's not like the book
And they find there is none to compare
To beautiful, beautiful Texas,
Where the beautiful bluebonnets grow."

Great Reviews of the Past
Monstrosities
"Those were the days
when it was OK to
gawk at strange-looking people,
perhaps laugh at them but
mostly to wonder what it was like
to be born with no arms or
to weigh 700 pounds or
to be eight feet tall."

BRIEF REVIEWS
Tree Barking
Baghdad Mon Amour
Philip Roth's
Indignation

LETTERS
Cataract Operations
That Go Bad
Ta Moko

MORE LETTERS
Prince von Metternich
Subagh Singh Khalsa

EVEN MORE LETTERS
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Paid Reviews
Lucien Hervé

ARTICLES
The Gravesend Trust
"With the approval of shareholders,
we could go full-time into acquiring crypts,
mausoleums, overgrown churchyards,
moss-bound catacombs,
Indian burial mounds,
Mesolithic middens,
and Egyptian pyramids,
whenever and wherever
the price is right."

READINGS
Ten of Our Most Popular Readings
Since 1994, we have offered
readings from our favorite books
or from new books under review.
Here are ten that continue
to get the most hits
each month.

POETRY
Feldwebel Zorn's Motorcycle
"Just the Zümdapp, in the corner
of my shed, among the wardrobes,
bicycles, and automobile tires
Grease keeps it from rust, moths, flies,
and ants have died in it, this sticky trap
In which there's no salvation,
either for them,
or for me."

Secret Agent
"I took care of everything: the alias
the hotel where no one would look for us.
His muscle, his being short and taciturn,
his smooth brown soles were my idea."

Should You Wish to Stay
"We are still made from the tears of Ra.
The spirits of unseen deities,
borne by the wind blowing from the desert,
coach us while we sleep in the demanding art
of dying well. But you are welcome to discover yourself.
The lavish, matter-of-fact sunlight
will save you further guidance."

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