Armand Schwerner Criticism
Armand Schwerner (1927-1999) was a Belgian-born American poet, translator, and essayist recognized for his innovative contributions to 20th-century poetry. His most significant work, The Tablets, evolved over three decades and exemplifies his exploration of language and identity through a blend of text, symbol, image, and sound. As a pioneer of ethnopoetics, Schwerner's work often satirizes modern life, language philosophies, and the scholarship of antiquities, highlighting the intersection of print and oral traditions.
Schwerner's biographical journey from Antwerp to New York City, his fluency in multiple languages, and his academic pursuits in anthropology and literature greatly influenced his enigmatic style. His primary work, The Tablets, is presented as the translated work of a fictive scholar, purportedly ancient clay tablets rich with Sumerian/Akkadian symbols. This epic not only parodies the interpretation of ancient texts but also parallels advancements in archaic materials scholarship. Schwerner's live performances of The Tablets incorporated music and visual elements, offering a multi-sensory experience that critics like Diane Wakoski argue is essential to fully appreciate his poetic language, as noted in A Satirist in the Avant-Garde.
Schwerner's work is often discussed within the context of ethnopoetics, as surveyed in Some Bearings on Ethnopoetics, and his imaginative use of glyphs in The Tablets reflects the intersection of poetic revelation and the study of ancient texts, as explored in Path of the Glyph. Despite the challenging categorization of his varied literary output, including essays and translations, Schwerner remains an influential figure in postwar experimental poetry, aligning with major contemporaries such as Robert Duncan and Charles Olson. His work invites ongoing scholarly engagement, as discussed in Selected Shorter Poems and Sacred Forgery and the Grounds of Poetic Archaeology: Armand Schwerner's The Tablets.
Contents
- Principal Works
-
Essays
-
A Satirist in the Avant-Garde
(summary)
In the following review of the 1971 version of The Tablets, American poet Diane Wakoski praises the work's satire and suggests that Schwerner's poetic language is showcased more completely in performance than in print.
-
Some Bearings on Ethnopoetics
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Christensen surveys contemporary critical opinion of Schwerner's poetry and discusses his work within the context of ethnopoetics.
-
Path of the Glyph
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Sanders discusses the role of glyphs, or symbolic characters, in The Tablets and reflects on similarities between a scholarly approach to hieroglyphics and Schwerner's poetic revelation and translation of imaginary ancient texts in his epic work.
-
An Interview with Armand Schwerner
(summary)
In the following interview, Schwerner and Foster explore Schwerner's views on the fluidity of language and identity in poetry, his challenges with categorization, and the tension between creative expression and the necessity of critical commentary.
-
Playing It Loose with The Tablets.
(summary)
In the following essay, Lavazzi discusses the sexual and genital imagery and language of Schwerner's poetry.
-
Review of “The Tablets.”
(summary)
The following essay is a brief review of Schwerner's final version of The Tablets and his Selected Shorter Poems. Schwerner's mischievous, fabular epic The Tablets is ostensibly a scholarly translation of twenty-seven clay tablets from the ancient Near East, but is in fact a postmodern meditation on language, translation, the limits of knowledge and origins of consciousness, and the pathos of intellectual life. Schwerner's Selected Shorter Poems make a worthy companion to The Tablets, with the best pieces being projections and refractions.
-
Selected Shorter Poems
(summary)
The following essay is a brief review of Schwerner's “Selected Shorter Poems.” Schwerner (1927-1999) 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, 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 sources—Eskimo poetry, Buddhism, Zuni myths—but frequently allows his playful sense of language 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.
-
Sacred Forgery and the Grounds of Poetic Archaeology: Armand Schwerner's The Tablets
(summary)
In the following essay, Lazer excerpts Schwerner's own commentary on his work and opinions from other critics to formulate an assessment of, and response to, the final version of The Tablets, Schwerner's epic work of poetry that was published in full by the National Poetry Foundation in the year of the poet's death.
-
A Satirist in the Avant-Garde
(summary)
- Further Reading