Armand Schwerner

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Armand Schwerner (1927-1999). Courtesy Discogs.

Armand Schwerner (1927-1999) was an avant-garde Jewish-American poet and an academic.

Life

Schwerner was born in Antwerp, Belgium. His family moved to the United States when he was nine years old.

He attended Columbia University, where he received a B.A. in 1950 and an M.A. in 1964.

He taught at universities in the New York City area until his retirement in 1983.

Writing

His most famous work, The Tablets, is a series of poems which claim to be reconstructions of ancient Sumero-Akkadian inscriptions, complete with lacunae and "untranslatable" words.

Publications

Poetry

• Seaweed. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow, 1969.
• Bacchae Sonnets (illustrated by James W. Mall). Omaha, NE: Cummington Press (Abattoir Editions), 1974.
• The Work, the Joy, and the Triumph of the Will. New York: New Rivers Press, 1977.
• Selected Shorter Poems by Armand Schwerner. San Diego, CA: Junction Press, 1999. x

The Tablets

• The Tablets, I-VIII. West Branch, IA: Cummington Press, 1968.
• The Tablets, I-XV. New York: Grossman, 1971.
• Sounds of the River Naranjana / The Tablets, I-XXIV. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill, 1983.
• The Tablets. Orono, ME: National Poetry Foundation, 1999.

Non-fiction

• Albert Camus' 'The Stranger': A critical commentary. New York: Monarch Press, 1970.

Translated

• Sophocles, Philoctetus (in The Work, the Joy, and the Triumph of the Will).

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• Armand Schwerner: A Brief Survey

Books

• Works by or about Armand Schwerner in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Audio / video

• Armand Schwerner at PennSound

About

• "Armand Schwerner, 71, Poet Who Performed His Dialogues," obituary at the New York Times
• Armand Schwerner: The Tablets at the Boston Review
• Interview from American Book Review
• Review of The Tablets