The Tablets [Hardcover]

Armand Schwerner (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0943373557 | ISBN-13: 978-0943373553 | Publication Date: June 1, 1999

A worthy successor of the great American long poems of our century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A resident of New York City since immigrating to the United States from Belgium in 1935, Schwerner passed away this February at age 71. The two books at hand are his summation. Schwerner's mischievous, fabular epic The Tablets, assembled here in full for the first time, is ostensibly a scholarly translation of twenty-seven clay tablets from the ancient Near East. In fact, it is a postmodern meditation on language, translation, the limits of knowledge and origins of consciousness, and the pathos of intellectual life. Indebted to Olson's "Song of Ullikummi" (a poem derived from the Hittite version of a Hurrian myth), Schwerner's fragmented, often humorous reconstruction of an ancient "original" is no more real than the Borgesian land of UqbarAor the Captain's Log on Star Trek. In some instances the muddle of past, present and future achieves an inspired lunacy. ("Tablet VII," we're told, survives only in classical Old Icelandic, the work "of a certain Henrik L., an archaeologically gifted Norwegian divine" of the 19th century.) "The conflict between the comedian and the mystic can make poems," notes Schwerner, and the "scholar translator" who presents the tablets, and whose anxieties and insights continually interruptAand often overwhelmAthe sometimes untranslatable original, exploits both sides. Accepting the authority of physical experience but tempering that authority with book learning and flights of fancy, Schwerner's Shorter Poems make a worthy companion to The Tablets. The best pieces are likewise projections and refractions, most notably the section "Eskimo and Others," retellings of stories found in anthropological texts. Other poems, like "Sounds of the River Naranjana," offer moving testimony to a life devoted to contemplation: "I'm 53 and the fire/ of the beginner again burns me into waiting. what time is it? the engines/ of pleasure the business of engines, of subconscious gossip/ in the dry white American desert." These books are an out-of-the-way oasis. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Schwerner (1927-99) was a maximalist, a poet of expansive aims and encyclopedic learning whose interest in anthropology and religion fueled a poetry that explored the very nature of civilization. The simultaneous publication of his lifelong project, The Tablets, and a generous selection of shorter poems, most out of print, is likely to fix his position among major postwar experimenters such as Robert Duncan, Louis Zukofsky, and Charles Olson, with whom he has been compared. The Tablets is the fictional restoration and analysis of an ancient Sumerian text, complete with scholarly notes, pictographs, debatable translations, and missing or lost passages. More than that, it's a huge vessel into which the poet deposits aspects of his own identity while probing the process of epistemology itself. In a manner similar to that of the late avant-garde Canadian poet bpNichol [sic], Schwerner laces his mock-academic pursuit with humor, invention, and an almost electric passion. The same qualities are found in Schwerner's lyric meditations, as the poet attempts to articulate how the "variegated mystery" of the self can achieve synthesis, becoming "the one mind in orchestration." Again, he draws on a "wild spectrum" of sourcesAEskimo poetry, Buddhism, Zuni mythsAbut frequently allows his playful sense of language ("How remunerative/ to be eleemosynary") to lighten the oracular load. Earnest and eccentric, stuffed with enough puzzles to keep poetry readers and scholars delightfully busy through the next century, these two volumes are essential for all libraries with substantial poetry collections.AFred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 158 pages
• Publisher: National Poetry Foundation (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0943373557
• ISBN-13: 978-0943373553
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,708,382 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Postmodern Long Poem, October 12, 2000

By 

"firstsorrow" (pecos, tx USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tablets (Paperback)

In the Tablets, Schwerner is by turns experimental, ironic, satiric, comic, reflexive, and serious. The criptic nature of the Tablets may turn some readers off, but for anyone interested in getting to know American poetry after 1945, the book is a must. Its right up there with "A", "The Cantos", and "Maximus". A faux archeology of consciousness. An altogether beautiful reading experience.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cryptic and compelling "poems", April 28, 2000

By 

Ron Henry (Ithaca NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tablets (Paperback)

When I first saw many of the works that make up Schwerner's TABLETS sequence in Conjunctions magazine back in the 80s, I was hooked: the compelling and playful invention of mythic stories, invented-archeological mock-transcriptions, and odd iconography seemed quite fascinating, and still does. I was saddened to hear the news last year that Schwerner had died, especially since I had been waiting years for someone to finally collect all of these odd and intriguing sections into a single volume.