Ron Silliman

The Grand Piano: Part 6 Ron Silliman

Cultural Writing. Biography and Memoir. Number six in the ongoing series of collective autobiography, THE GRAND PIANO (PART SIX) continues to mark the events, movements and intersections among ten contributing 1970's Language poets. The series takes its name from a Haight Street coffee shop at which the poets used to read, and is primarily concerned with reconstructing the period when the contributors were at the forefront of radical poetics. THE GRAND PIANO is itself a veering off and an investigation and a playing or experimenting with the materials of language, history, textuality, and temporality, the personal and political, poetry and community.... There is an abundance to linger over in THE GRAND PIANO even as and perhaps because of the large gaps and contradictions--Robin Tremblay-McGaw. Some of the many topics in part 6 include: poetry and the body, sexual preference, feminism (waves 1 and 2), Pereleman's Talks series, Poets Theater, performance, visual art, jazz, and Chicago's Bughouse Square.