The Grand Piano Part 1

by Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, Barrett Watten

Poetry. Cultural Writing. THE GRAND PIANO is an ongoing experiment in collective autobiography by ten writers identified with Language poetry in San Francisco. It takes its name from a coffeehouse at 1607 Haight Street, where from 1976-79 the authors took part in a reading and performance series. The writing project, begun in 1998, was undertaken as an online collaboration, first via an interactive web site and later through a listserv. When completed, THE GRAND PIANO will comprise ten parts, in which each of the ten authors will appear in a different sequence. These poets are Bob Perelman, Barrett Watten, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, and Ted Pearson.

79 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2006

About the author

Ron Silliman has written and edited 30 books to date, most recently articipating in the multi-volume collaborative autobiography, The Grand Piano. Between 1979 & 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, entitled The Alphabet. In addition to Woundwood, a part of VOG, volumes published thus far from that project have included ABC, Demo to Ink, Jones, Lit, Manifest, N/O, Paradise, (R), Toner, What and Xing. The University of Alabama Press will publish the entire work as a single volume in 2008. Silliman has now begun writing a new poem entitled Universe.

Silliman was the 2006 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and was a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council as well as a Pew Fellow in the Arts in 1998. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two sons, and works as a market analyst in the computer industry.

Reviews

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This "experiment in collective autobiography" catches the Language group graying at the temples and reflecting on their historic moment, the downslope of the '70s in a San Francisco that still enjoyed "low cost of living, available marginal employment, free play of alternative organizing principles." (Kit Robinson)

The "alternative organizing principle" here--10 contributors over a projected 10 volumes; authors identified by block initials; one memoirist occasionally responding to another--feels like so much chrome and fenders on a car that zips along just fine without them. ("We're all writing discursive sentences here, and isn't that odd?" writes Perelman.) A lot of (interesting) talk about the writing and typesetting of books, a lot of protestations of not rightly remembering, and a lot of the Bay Area of that particular time and place kept strangely off in the wings, appearing mostly as street names to locate apartments. "If there's nothing out the window look at books."

"KR" sweetened the pot for me most, and really all of them left me wanting to read the other nine. I will.

[NOTE: the above refers to the latest installment, Vol. 3, of a projected 10-part series.]