Historic Audio Airing Today at Clocktower Radio: Armand Schwerner's The Tablets, Part I

Today at Clocktower, historic audio from avant-garde poet Armand Schwerner, author, most famously, of The Tablets. "This segment is the first of two programs featuring the profound writer," Clocktower tells us. "In this initial 1976 recording, Schwerner reads, or performs, the piece as it nears completion."

Armand Schwerner was a poet who scripted works of grand proportions. The piece for which he is best known, and that subsequently defined a new genre of poetry, is humbly entitled, The Tablets. The epic is a reconstruction of ancient Sumero-Akkadian inscriptions, complete with lacunae and untranslatable words. In a broader sense, Schwerner made a translation of his own metier, uncovering the poetic potential of an anthropologist's study of ancient languages and traditions. In this case, one that was over 4,000 years old. Rather than the pretext of subtleties often represented in the art form, he focused on the made thing – the poem became the artifact, the object. He spent 25 years transcribing the work, ultimately concluding with his death, an effort that has been likened to Ezra Pound's Cantos.

All part of Charles Ruas's radio show, Historic Audio from the Archives of Charles Ruas. Listen here.