Why Oh Why?
Each month we offer our readers
a Paradox-of-the-Month:
a quip, a mot, a brain-twister
gathered from
our readings over the years.
Here are fifteen which
we consider to be the most
puzzling if not exasperating.

NEW REVIEWS
And So It Goes
"All fiction writers
are chronic liars.
Any confusion between them and
their characters has to be
the delusion of critics.
Perfidy: that's their craft and art;
it's their middle name."

The Centaur in the Garden
"From the waist up, he's a
robust, pink baby, crying and
moving his little hands.
From the waist down,
he's all horsie."

The Kress Collection
At the Denver Art Museum
"Mary appears quite beat.
Imagine having to go through
post-partum depression
with all these nut-cases
coming out of the woodwork
claiming to have been invited in
by a passing star."

Dumb Luck
"I would call her up
in a trice if I came down
with 3,000,000 smackers
just to get her to teach me
how to kiss her while
we're sitting in the front seat
of my new BMW."

[Sic]: A Memoir
"Sic being the title
of an entire book implies
that there a mistake here
that must be called to
the reader's attention."

Mending
"I got the feeling
that if I wanted to get caught
in the middle of a bicker,
I could probably find
all I needed here at home
with my own spouse."

The Other Walk
"He --- like many of the rest of us ---
has acrophobia and
the worst time to figure this out
is when you are half-way up
the tallest house you've ever seen."

The Spiritual Doorway to the Brain
"The next time I woke
in this state of non-movement
I did just what he said, rotated
my ethereal body around the spine
'just as if,' I wrote later,
'I were a pig on a spit.'"

Great Reviews of the Past
The Past from Above
"Stonehenge looks like
the 18th hole of the National
Golf Club at Augusta,
while Morocco's ruins at Lixus
appear like curlicues made by
beach buggies on Padre Island."

LETTERS
Grant from
The Ford Foundation

MORE LETTERS
Notes of an Abject Reptile
Georges Lemaitre

EVEN MORE LETTERS
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Hello, Honey
Dog Walkers
Rubber Belts

YET EVEN MORE LETTERS
Letters We Never Finished Reading
United Nations Compensation

ARTICLE
The Concert-Going Life
"I have developed a knack
for spying out and occupying
empty expensive concert seats,
as well as some facility in
talking my way out
when caught in the act."

READINGS
A Vision of Dying
"Each time I saw the black shape,
it lingered longer than the last,
it was closer, and the light source
clearly divulged the texture
of its surface."

Great Readings of the Past
At Lolita's Cafe
"I take a bite of
crunchy pineapple, and look over,
and Squirrel is chowing down
on the head of a crunchy 'hopper,
and I look away,
at the huge American
sitting next to me
telling me about his life in Mexico.
Both of them are down-home Ugly."

POETRY
Self Diagnosis and Treatment
"In rare instances,
those with tremors in locations
prone to earthquakes may find
their tremors, if persisting,
less apparent, less troubling."

Annulment
"we mouthed our vows
beneath a prop plane
rented by old flames.
The plane circled noisily
above, our exes
yelling: Don't, and
Do me instead,
a ruckus that meant
we never really heard."

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"

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