A N E X P E R I M E N T I N
C O L L E C T I V E A U T O B I O G R A P H Y
The Grand Piano is a multi-volume, collaborative work centered on the rise of Language poetry
in San Francisco in the second half of the 1970s. The authors — Rae Armantrout, Steve Benson,
Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Tom Mandel, Ted Pearson, Bob Perelman, Kit Robinson, Ron Silliman,
and Barrett Watten — were among the creators of the movement, as was Alan Bernheimer,
the eleventh pianist, who takes the lead in organizing documentation for the books and our website.
History
The Grand Piano takes its name from a coffeehouse at 1607 Haight Street in San Francisco where from 1976 to 1979 several of us programmed and coordinated – and all of us participated in – a weekly reading and performance series.
The project focuses on the 1970s when we first met and collaborated. Yet the volumes engage issues beyond that time, and the project adheres to no prescribed set of themes.
Originally, each author was to follow the prompt of the previous. In the event, many sections have been written out of order, and the project's development has been nonlinear even as it is being published in serial form.
By the time we began to discuss the project in 1998, many of us had left the Bay Area. Tom suggested we work in a collaborative online space developed by a company he had founded. Ron suggested that we call our online space "The Grand Piano," after the reading series that had been so important to the growth of our community. As we planned the structure, Barrett began to refer to its structure as "Mode A," and the name remains active in the publishing imprint for the books. When Tom's company disappeared in the dotcom collapse, we continued the project via a listserv.
The complete set of The Grand Piano comprises ten volumes, with the ten authors appearing in differing sequence in each volume, according to the following grid:
| 1 | BP | BW | SB | CH | TM | RS | KR | LH | RA | TP |
| 2 | BW | TP | RA | SB | KR | TM | RS | CH | LH | BP |
| 3 | SB | TM | CH | RA | LH | BP | BW | TP | KR | RS |
| 4 | CH | KR | TM | BW | RA | TP | LH | BP | RS | SB |
| 5 | TM | RS | BW | TP | SB | RA | BP | KR | CH | LH |
| 6 | RS | SB | BP | KR | BW | LH | CH | RA | TP | TM |
| 7 | KR | CH | LH | RS | BP | BW | TP | TM | SB | RA |
| 8 | LH | RA | RS | BP | TP | KR | TM | SB | BW | CH |
| 9 | RA | LH | TP | TM | RS | CH | SB | BW | BP | KR |
| 10 | TP | BP | KR | LH | CH | SB | RA | RS | TM | BW |
While we are all equal authors of the project, credit is due to Lyn for handling subscriptions, Tom for our website, Alan for organizing documentation, and Barrett for design and publication of the printed volumes.