The Tablets: Selected Poems and Translations

Author: Armand Schwerner

Publisher: Verge Books (2026)

Written over the course of decades, The Tablets, are an imagined trove of Assyriological texts that Armand Schwerner used to explore the nature of translation, interpretation, and the way language generates meaning. Schwerner inhabits the persona of a scholar translator who offers tentative and often contradictory readings of the texts. The poem performs an ersatz archeology full of discoveries that are equal parts comic and spiritual. Assembled here in this volume along with The Tablets is a generous selection of Schwerner's translations and shorter poems.