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February / 2009
The New Yorker hearts two RiYL Bands? A Chris Maher Poem Anthologized? /// Tuesday, 24 /// dispatch from Chris!
Ooh la la:
In the recent weeks, two of our bands got some love from the reputable New Yorker magazine. The magazine wrote of The WoWz: "The country-leaning rock-and-roll trio the Wowz traffic in polished harmonies and the occasional twang, but behind the rough folk façade there’s a great deal of wit and allusion, and a deeply urban core—the Everly Brothers with a New York accent." Regarding Dream Bitches, they said: "The Dream Bitches’ Summer of Love-inspired rock-and-roll songs are loaded with so many words it’s a wonder that the two lead vocalists, Yoko Kikuchi and Ann Zakaluk, don’t slip up; they deliver them at a breakneck pace, and slip seamlessly from unison to harmony and back." Thanks, New Yorker! Catch The WoWz at Sidewalk Café (94 Avenue A, NYC) this Friday night, February 27th, and Dream Bitches the following night, Saturday, February 28th, at Glasslands (289 Kent Ave., Brookyln).
In other news, a poem credited to Chris Maher appears in a collection called "Issue #1", alongside poems credited to heavyweights like W.B. Yeats, Emily Dickinson, James Tate, Ezra Pound and Edna St. Vincent Millay. The two-line poem, called "Working dark", reads:
Working dark
A lute of cobwebs
Chris Maher
So, what's the deal? According to Chris, he didn't write the poem, but he is tickled by it: "If I had written it, I wouldn't've thrown it in the trash." He added, "I find it odd that the poem appears on page 736 of the collection. Those numbers were the first three digits of my home phone number as a child." Coincidence? Apparently, "Issue #1" was assembled by editors Stephen McLaughlin and Jim Carpenter with the help of an algorithmic poetry generator called Erika. The software spit out thousands of "poems", to which the names of various poets and writers (both living and deceased) were then randomly assigned. We think its a cool project, definitely worth perusing, but apparently a lot of the people whose names were used are pissed off. Who knew poets could be so uptight?
See you next time,
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