Reviews, Poetry, and Readings in RALPH, Arranged by Date
R  A  L  P  H
The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities

Complete List of Readings, Reviews,
and Poetry Appearing in RALPH:
Winter, 1994 - 1995
Spring, 1995
Summer, 1995
Fall, 1995

Volume X, Number 4 --- Winter 1994 - 1995

Archive #4


Troublesome People:
The Warriors of Pacifism
By Caroline Moorehead
(Adler & Adler)


Raising Turkeys, Ducks, Geese, and Guineas
By Cynthia Haynes
(Tab Books)


Harmony by Hand:
Art of the Southwest Indians
By Patrick Houlihan, Jerold L. Collings, Sarah Nestor, and Jonathan Batkin
(Chronicle Books)


Image and Word:
The Interaction of Twentieth-Century Photographs and Texts
By Jefferson Hunter
(Harvard)


How to Repair Food
By Marina and John Bea
(Ten Speed Press)


It's a Long Road to Comondú:
Mexican Adventures Since 1928
By Everett Gee Jackson
(Texas A & M Press)


Guide to the Yucatan Peninsula
By Chicki Mallan
(Moon Publications)


The Underground Atlas:
A Gazeteer of the World's Cave Regions
By John Middleton and Tony Waltham
(St Martin's Press)


Intuitive Psychotherapy:
The Role of Creative Therapeutic Intervention
By William N. Confer
(Human Sciences Press)


The Florida Keys:
From Key Largo to Key West
By Joy Williams
(Random House)


Horn of the Moon Cookbook:
Recipes from Vermont's Renowned Vegetarian Restaurant
By Ginny Callan
(Harper & Row)


The Psychology of Spiritual Growth
By Mary E. Carreiro
(Bergin & Garvey)


Permanent New Yorkers:
A Biographical Guide to the Cemeteries of New York
By Judi Culbertson and Tom Randall
(Chelsea Green)


Posters of the WPA
By Chris DeNoon
(University of Washington)


Ich Kuss Die Hand:
The Letters of H. L. Mencken to Gretchen Hood
Peter W. Dowell, editor
(University of Alabama Press)


The Definitive Four-Act Version of
"The Importance of Being Earnest"
Ruth Berggren, Editor
(Vanguard)


The Kundalini Experience
By Lee Sannella
(Integral) 


The Ultimate Game:
The Rise and Fall of Bhagwan Shree Raineesh
By Kate Strelley
(Harper & Row)


Fielding's Africa Safaris
By Jane and Leah Taylor
(Morrow)


Tales of Texas and Beyond
By Charles A. Watson
Cedar Elm Publishing)


If I knew the way, I would take you Home
By Elizabeth Gips
"I was very young the first time I died."


In Flanders Fields
By Leon Wolff
"When one officer was instructed to consolidate his advance position, he wrote back, It is impossible to consolidate porridge."


The Eating of Time
By Maha Ghosanand
"Feeling has six mouths --- the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind."


Ambivalent Zen
By Michael Shainberg
"We've got this idea of something trapped that we've got to set free. Like there's a bird in your hand..."


The Book of the Grotesque
By Sherwood Anderson
"Some were amusing, some almost beautiful, and one, a woman all drawn out of shape, hurt the old man by her grotesqueness."


To A Former Mistress, Now Dead
By John Updike
"At times I catch myself making that loose mouth old people make, as if one's teeth don't fit, without being false. You're well out of it"


litany
By Carolyn Creedon
"Tom, can we make a baby together? I want to be a big pregnant woman with A loved face and give you a squalling red daughter.
no, but i will come inside you and you will be my daughter"


Sing Ho! to the New Keyboard
By C. K. Rywalt
"Now is the time (Sing ho!) now is
The time, they say, for love, my love.
Now is the time for all good
Men of love to come (Love-to-come!)
To the aid of their partly."


Volume XI, Number 1 --- Spring, 1995

Archive #3


Wind & Sand
By Lyanne Wescott
(Eastern Acorn Press)
"They spent a total of eleven years being eaten alive by mosquitoes, begging money from the family, and painstakingly experimenting with gliders."



Vietnam at War

By Lt. Gen. Phillip B. Davidson
(Presidio)
Chicago '68
By David Farber
(Chicago)
"The real traitors? Of course --- the American people themselves, wimps with a positively weird distaste for blood and gore and death."



The Field Guide to North American Males

By Marjorie Ingall
(Henry Holt & Co.)
"My daughter¹s book offers handy descriptions of over 50 species of boys."



A History of Reading

By Alberto Manguel
(viking)
"Remember that noisy Angie Peters who sat in front of our sixth grade class and always waved his hand in the teacher's face?"


The Dilemma of Reform
in the Soviet Union

By Timothy Holton
(Council on Foreign Relations)


S. J. Perelman: A Life
By Dorothy Hermann
(Putnam)


Anarchist Organization:
The History of the FAI
By Juan Gomez Casas
Translated by Abe Bluestein
(Black Rose)


S. J. Perelman/The Haunted House in Pioneer Square
By the Variety Club (Seattle, Washington)
"My view is that tinkering with the English language
should be regulated every bit as strictly
as trade in controlled substances."



Letter from Mexico

By Carlos Amantea
"He tells me that there is a soup that they make called Sopa de Sancudos --- Mosquito Soup."



Call It Sleep

By Henry Roth
"One kid, one only kid.
And a dog came
and bit the cat
that ate the kid
that my father bought
for two zuzim."



Rats, Lice, and History

By Hans Zinsser
"If lice can dread, the nightmare of their lives is the fear of someday
inhabiting an infected rat or human being."



The Space Merchants

By Frederick Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth
"I was becoming the kind of consumer we used to love. Think about smoking, think about Starrs, light a Starr. Light a Starr, think about Popsie, get a squirt."



The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter

Translated by Ezra Pound
"While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse..."


A Poem by e. e. cummings

anyone lived in a pretty how town

"anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating so many bells down)"


Volume XI, Number 2 --- Summer 1996

Archive #2



The Wit & Wisdom of Mark Twain

Edited by Alex Ayres
(Harper & Row)
"Like saying, of a book of Henry James,
'Once you put it down, you simply can't pick it up.'"



A Whole New Life

By Reynolds Price
In which the author develops a tumor and
meets Jesus in the Sea of Galilee



Why Anti-matter Matters

Ubu Roi
"Alfred Jarry, whose work prefigured theater of the absurd, Dada, Surrealism and
Futurism also may have anticipated certain modern physics theories."



Communion

By Whitley Strieber
(Morrow)
"They inserted this thing in my rectum. It seemed to swarm into me as if it had a life of its own."


Eurasian White Pelicans
From the Audubon Society Book of Water Birds
By Les Line, Kimball L. Garrett,
and Kenn Kaufman
(Harry Abrams)


Texas Prisons:
The Walls Came Tumbling Down
By Steve Martin and Sheldon Ekland-Olson
(Texas Monthly Press)


Winning and Losing In the Love Market
By Charles M. Whipple, Jr
(Brunswick Publishing)


The Unknown Iacocca
By Peter Wyden
(Morrow)


The Troubled People Book
By Paul G. Quinnett
(Continuum Publishing)


The Care of Strangers:
The Rise of America's Hospital System
By Charles E. Rosenberg
(Basic Books)


Capitalism & Arithmetic:
The New Math of the 15th Century
By Frank J. Swetz.
(Open Court)


Traffic Court:
How to Win
By James Glass
(Allenby Press)


A Latterday Confucian:
Reminiscences of William Hung
By Susan Chan Egan
(Harvard University Press)



The Sweet Sweet Taste of Asophædita

By W. L. Warren
"For flavor and stink, Asophædita must rank with the inside of A New York garbage truck, at the end of a long, long week."



Geography Isn't Destiny

By Jon Gallant
"Sweden could escape those dark winters and the Strindbergian gloom by simply announcing that it will henceforth be a Mediterranean country."


Brain Surgeon
By Lawrence Shainberg
(J P Lippincott)
"It was just a smelly piece of brown and white meat, a bit like a veal cutlet, with a texture like foam rubber and the shape (really beautiful) of a butterfly."



The Space Merchants

By Frederick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth
Ballentine
"We all know," he said, "what put us where we are. We remember the Starrzelius Verily account, and how we put Indiastries on the map..."



The Blob That Ate Oaxaca

By Carlos Amantea
Mho & Mho
"Women are Ernest's soul and life and heart. It makes no difference --- age, race, distinguishing marks, social rank, dimensions, or redeeming natural features"


Onanism
By Mark Twain
In which Sam'l Clemens (of all people) discusses the ins and outs of self-abuse.



The Mouth

From The Mahabarata
"A great wind rose up, an irresistible gust swept Markandeya toward the mouth."


Terra Incognita
By D. H. Lawrence
"There are vast realms of consciousness still undreamed of vast ranges of experience, like the humming of unseen harps..."


The Song of Wandering Ængus
By W. B. Yeats
"I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread..."



Song To Onan's Complaining Hand

By Manuel del Cabral
"I am the passion of the condemned.
Not the bedroom game
that makes lives.
I am the lover of those who don't love."



Three by X. J. Kennedy

"Here lies resting, out of breath,
Out of turns, Elizabeth
Whose quicksilver toes not quite
Cleared the whirring edge of night."


Volume XI, Number 3 --- Fall, 1995

Archive #1



The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

By Jean-Dominique Bauby
Knopf
"One eye was sewn shut, the other goggled like the doomed eye of Cain. For a moment I stared at that dilated pupil, before I realized it was only mine."



The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

By Luis Sepúlveda
Translated by Peter Bush
(Harvest)
"He's the kind of writer you and I want to be...He moves effortlessly into the tale then it moves on its own, and you (and he) have to do nothing."



Proslavery:

A History of the Defense of Slavery in America
By Larry E. Tise
(University of Georgia)
"The 'Oracular Decisions' of God have positively declared that the Slave-Trade is intrinsically good and licit..."


American Talk:
The Words and Ways of American Dialects
By Robert Hendrickson
(Viking)


Penguins
By John Sparks and Tony Soper
(Facts on File)


Harlem Renaissance:
Art of Black America
Edited by Charles Miers
(Abrams)


Titanic:
The Life and Death of a Legend
By Michael Davie
(Knopf)


You Must Remember This
By Joyce Carol Oates
(Dutton)


The Gnostic Scriptures
Translated by Bently Layton
(Doubleday)



Fatty

By Wanda Felix
"A tremendous man skipped up the steps as lightly as Fred Astaire. He was tremendous, obese --- just plain fat. 'Name's Arbuckle,' he said, 'Roscoe Arbuckle. Call me Fatty!'"



Beautiful Summer in New Jersey

By B. McClellan
"But I could never forget, can never forget, will never forget you, Paul --- The smears of blood down the hallway, and on the edges of the white
porcelain tub."



Free Land

By R. Doister
A radical plan for bringing inner cities back to life which, for a change, will directly benefit the poor and the homeless.


The Old Man Who Read Love Stories
By Luis Sepulveda
(Harvest)
"The business of the gondolier, the gondola, and all that ardent kissing became a little clearer after two hours of discussion spiced with juicy anecdotes."



Gringolandia

J. Gallant & L. Milam
"All Mexicans and Latinos are welcome to the USA as long as they bring their Visa cards."



The Buddha of Boystown

By Ignacio Schwartz
"I didn't want to be born. But all I could do was try to stop it, or perhaps, at worst, pretend it didn't happen."



The Black Book

By Lawrence Durrell
"Next door Miss Venable is powdering her harelip. The gas fire is playing its mute jazz.The snow is falling."



The Song of The Girl of Gold

(Casida de La Muchacha Dorada)
By Federico García-Lorca
"The girl of gold bathed in the water and
the water turned to gold."


The Ladies of the School
By A W Allworthy
"The Ladies of the School of Bliss/ Have
announced
They are preparing to crush thyme/ Against the Dying Stars."


Saint Peter Got Smashed
By A T Kendall
"Here's to this old digit named Peter
(As in Peter, Paul, John, Matthew
And Mary Magdalene, she Ms Thumb)."


Money
Friday Night at the Royal Station Hotel
By Philip Larkin
"Through open doors, the dining-room declares
A larger loneliness of knives and glass
And silence laid like carpet."
 

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