The Grand Piano

San Francisco 1975–80

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PART 8

Lyn Hejinian begins:

THE ARTISTIC IMAGINATION’S capacity for performing astonishing feats of linkage is one key to its ability to do philosophical and political work. Poetics and poetry are alike in being able to combine; they generate themselves with forged connections. To make a picture is not identical with getting the picture, but having pictures seems a prerequisite for understanding — including understanding that something is often wrong with them. It is sometimes the task of art to ask the question “What’s wrong with this picture?” And sometimes it is art’s task not only to query the picture but to queer it. The imagination’s ability to perform feats of unlinkage, then, is an essential part of its subversive, liberatory potential — and its opposition to efficiency.




The Grand Piano is an experiment in collective autobiography. Subscribe to all ten volumes or a partial subscription beginning with any volume.