"Why leave fictive experiments to the prose writers?” the author asks in his afterword. THE TABLETS is his answer. Armand Schwerner has been “reconstructing” these fictional Sumero-Akkadian inscriptions, apparently from the time of The Epic of Gilgamesh, since 1968. A playful and powerful poetry is the result, at once visual and literary. Gaps and hieroglyphics speak eloquently, and Schwerner takes full advantage of the liberty provided by “indecipherable and untranslatable” passages - the poems include notes from a rather pedantic and often hilarious scholar-translator.

All this beautifully realised paraphernalia allows Schwerner to be many voices at once: funny, passionate, banal, ecstatic, uncouth and profound. The result is a tour-de-force at every level, poems from an imagined world when writing was new, directed at now.

“Likely to force a re-evaluation of the possibilities of visual poetry ... An extraordinary book of poems...reveals a staggering complexity, wit, and style.” - Art In America