While in San Francisco, he served on numerous community boards, including the 1980 Census Oversight Committee, the Arson Task Force of the San Francisco Fire Department, and the State Department of Health's Task Force on Health Conditions in Locale Detention Facilities.

[citation needed] Silliman classifies his poetry as part of a lifework, which he calls Ketjak, a name refers to a form of Balinese dance drama based on an ancient text.

Silliman thought that such early acceptance was less a recognition of his skills than a lack of standards or rigor characteristic of that literary tendency; he began looking for alternatives.

Some of these alternatives were initiated through various editing projects that he took part in, which gave him the opportunity to work with a wide range of poets.

He says that "The Dwelling Place," a feature article on nine poets published in Alcheringa (1975), was his "first attempt to write about language poetry".

[5] This collaboration became part of what was called "an experiment in collective autobiography," co-authored by ten of these Language poets in San Francisco.

The other nine writers included were Bob Perelman, Barrett Watten, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Kit Robinson, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, and Ted Pearson.

Asked to discuss the role of reference in poetry, he wrote the essay, "Disappearance of the Author, Appearance of the World," which was first published in the journal Art Con.