The tablets
The Tablets takes its place as a worthy successor of the great American long poems of our century: Pound's Cantos, Williams's Paterson, Olson's Maximus, Zukofsky's "A". The first edition, published in 1968, included eight tablets. Over the years, The Tablets continued to grow.
The present edition is the first to include all twenty-seven tablets that Schwerner had completed at the time of his death, along with the poet's own commentary on the work in the form of "Journals/Divagations." This edition also includes a CD of Schwerner reading extensive selections of The Tablets.
The Tablets "translate" fragments of fictive Sumero-Akkadian clay tablets that are, we are told, over 4,000 years old. A "scholar-translator" provides conjectural readings, annotations, and commentary, giving the work an archeological-fragmentary structure that allows a complex openness of collage, mixed genres, and polyvocalism.
