The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities |
NEW LISTINGS
Post-Expressionism: The Art of The Great Disorder,
The Treasury of Victorian Murder, and
The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis
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Great Reviews of the Past
BRIEF REVIEWS
THE WEEKLY RALPH
READINGS
ARTICLES Such Interesting People A Final Letter from the Southernmost Part of the Northern Hemisphere
POETRY
Spermatorrhea
LETTERS
ARCHIVES
HELP
TABLE OF CONTENTS
How Now Shall We Live?
"His words, and those of Pat Roberts and other evangelicals,
seem to be unequivocal on the subject of capital punishment.
They've forgotten that 2,000 years ago, in the Roman Empire,
crucifixion was the most favored form of capital punishment."
They Can't Hide Us Anymore
"It puts us in mind of Lolita's favorite song,
as reported to us by Humbert Humbert:
And the carmen, and the starmen, and the barmen,
and the starmen, and the barmen, and the carmen."
Family Kaleidoscope
"Minuchin's therapeutic technique is a doozy,
culling the best of Fritz Perls, Freud, Alice Miller,
Milton Erickson but --- most of all --- a technique
and an attitude all his own."
The Buddha as your own Mumsie,
Where not to go to find tornadoes, and
Flann O'Brien's Gaelic wit.
The Aesthetics of Foot-Binding
"When a Celestial takes into his hand a woman's foot, especially if it is very small,
the effect upon him is precisely the same as is provoked in a European by a
young and firm bosom. All the Celestials whom I have interrogated on this point
have replied unanimously: Oh, a little foot! You Europeans
cannot understand how exquisite, how sweet, how exciting it is!
Maryland Beaten Biscuits
"As was their custom, the gentleman did the swimming
while the soft lady beneath, locked to him with all her legs,
allowed him his pleasure, which might last for fourteen hours.
Crabbers refer to the male and female thus coupled in their sport
as one crab, a doubler, just as Plato imagined the human prototype
to be male and female joined into one being."
"Below us the engines like buildings tossed in their interminable sleep.
Within touching distance a piston like an oak tree
shot up at one angle and down at another.
Everything I touched was quivering
and felt like graphite."
The Rapist in Our Bedroom
"One recent study said that every four minutes,
there is yet another act of violence committed on television.
We must pity our poor battered America, and brood on
our willingness to give free rein to this beast that religiously,
each day, poisons the hearts and souls of the young and the innocent."
"My crawl across the living room floor to the phone
was, in its way, as challenging, daring and dangerous
as Edmund Hillary's ascent of Everest."
Happy Bird Day
"The whole of humanity is teetering on the edge,
ready to fall in, but, despite that, my very kind friends
are still alive, still singing, merrily singing that old love song,
Happy Bird Day To You,/
Happy Bird Day To You,
Happy Bird Day Dear Carlos,/
Happy Bird Day To You."
Sleeping Late
"It is terrible/
the little noise of the hard-boiled egg
broken on a metal counter/this noise is terrible
when it stirs in the memory of the man who is hungry."
"In its foul march it tramples vigor down,/
Darkens the soul, usurps the mental throne,
Prays upon the vitals of its filthy slave,/
And drags him early to a hopeless grave."
H. L. Mencken and "The Greeks,"
How to frighten friends with RALPH, and
A Question of Bravery
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Titles, authors, and publishers
of all books reviewed in RALPH ---
arranged chronologically.
1995 1996 1997 1998
1999 (Early) 1999 (Late)
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