Publication announcement and subscription offer!

THE GRAND PIANO
An Experiment in Collective Autobiography
San Francisco, 1975-1980

by Bob Perelman, Barrett Watten, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, and Ted Pearson

THE GRAND PIANO is an on-going 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 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 each of which the ten authors will appear in a difference sequence.

Like the early avant-gardes, the people who gathered at the Grand Piano developed not only an exacting and liberating poetics, but also a way of living-in-art. Its chronicle here is many things, among them a deeply human and amusing map to building community through literature in this most unlikely of times.

– Cole Swensen

Part 1 is scheduled to appear November 2006, with subsequent volumes to be published at three-month intervals. Subscription to the entire series of ten volumes is now available for $90 (individual volumes for $12.95  each) directly from Lyn Hejinian, 2639 Russell Street, Berkeley, CA 94705.  For subscription order form:

http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac%5Fpages/ewatten/pdfs/gporder.pdf (color)
http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac%5Fpages/ewatten/pdfs/gporderbw.pdf (black and white)

Designed and published by Barrett Watten, Mode A/This Press (Detroit), 6885 Cathedral Drive, Bloomfield Twp., MI 48301. Distributed (individual orders and trade) by Small Press Distribution, Inc., 1341 Seventh Street, Berkeley, CA 94710- 1408. ISBN 978-0-9790198-0-X (part 1), 80 pp., wrappers.