NEW REVIEWS
Roadside America
"American highways were
jammed with eye-popping artifacts
to get our attention, so we
would pull over in the old Plymouth
to arrange a moist night at, say,
the Blue Mist Motel in
Miami Beach, Florida."

Friendly Fallout 1953
"A bomb that cremated
an entire island became an
elbow-in-the-ribs joke
for a whole generation of
young men on the beach,
leering at such a bounty
of flesh barely hidden
under a bikini."

Volunteer
"Instead of heading off
to Africa to watch lions
humping each other
in the veldt,
we can actually protect them
from being hunted to extinction."

The English Is Coming
"There is
an ATM in
Vatican City that
operates solely
in Latin."

The Colossus of Maroussi
" I am poor as a tramp,
I have no possessions,
no responsibilities, no job,
no assurance of anything,
and --- because of that ---
I am the happiest man alive."

Wicked River
"Pouring its chocolate tide along,
between its solid forest walls,
its almost un-tenanted shores,
with seldom a sail or
a moving object of any kind
to disturb the surface and
break the monotony of
the black, watery solitude."

Come Again No More
"I'm not so sure
who in their right mind ---
outside of Jake and
Joe Louis and Max Schmeling
and Max Baer
(and Joyce Carol Oates) ---
would want to spend an evening
at a punchout blood-drip
boxing-match like this."

Tunnel People
"Amtrak appears, eager,
understandably, to stamp paid to
this collection of misfits
who are gumming up their schedules by
bedding down on the tracks."

Great Reviews of the Past
Birds of San Diego
"We tend to confuse bumblebees
with Rufous Hummingbirds,
and get excited when we see
a Rock Dove which ---
the authors inform us ---
is no more than the
common street pigeon."

LETTERS
The Third Avenue El

MORE LETTERS
The Wreck of the Grosvenor
My Bloody Life

EVEN MORE LETTERS
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Love Loveline

YET EVEN MORE LETTERS
Letters We Never Finished Reading
A Late Client (Dead)

ARTICLE
Great Articles of the Past
The 3rd Ave. El
"I loved looking out of
the train windows and
into the apartments,
where I could study
the people watching me
watching them."

READINGS
Country Hotels
"On the stairs outside my room
they were re-enacting
Israel Putnam's escape
from the British,
and every so often
somebody in the room overhead
broke into a waltz clog
in a pair of specially built
lead shoes."

POETRY
Where I Live
"When I opened the window
fishes swam into the room,
herrings. A school of them
must just have been passing."

Great Poems of the Past
March 16
"I remember the year
my favorite song was 'All of Me'
by Sinatra the phrase on everyone's
lips was 'in your face' I wrote
odes to the nudes in Lee Friedlander's
photos the tropical tufts of pubic
hair and cheap alarm clocks
constantly going off as if time
were speeding up and the cabdriver
taking me to the airport said
I know you you're the guy who
played the doctor on Love Boat"

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