---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 15:05:56 -1000
From: Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Death notice: Armand Schwerner
 
poetry etc - a list administered by John Kinsella -
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My good friend Armand Schwerner died this morning after several months of
cancer. He was 71. Charles Bernstein posted the appended text, most of
which is a well-chosen exerpt from Armand's great serial poem of 30 years'
making _The Tablets_, on the Buffalo Poetics list.
 
For those of you who don't know Armand's work, he was one of the few truly
great poets working in English in his generation. You'll be able to confirm
that soon, as within the next two months The National Poetry Foundation
will publish the final version of _The Tablets_ and I will publish, under
the Junction Press imprint, his Selected Shorter Poems, which, at 144
pages, represents about 2/3 of his non-Tablets poetry as well as a handful
of translations (and there's a lot of wonderful things in there).
 
At the time of his death Armand was hoping to finish his translation of
_The Inferno_. The eight or ten cantos he finished are to be published by
Talisman, either as a chapbook or a special section in the magazine.
 
Here's the bio that Mike Heller, his closest friend and now literary
executor, wrote for the prepublication celebration and reading on January
6th in New York:
 
Armand Schwerner is a poet, translator from many languages, musician,
performance artist and essayist. He has published more than twenty volumes
of poetry and translation including, most recently, _Philoctetes_,
published in the Penn Greek Drama Series. His work has appeared in over
fifty anthologies. His long poem sequence, _The Tablets_, has been adapted
for the stage by the Living Theater and incorporated into the pan-Asian
American multimedia work, _Dragon Bond Rite_. Both works, along with
numerous dance and music collaborations, have been widely performed both in
the United States and abroad.
 
And here's what Jerry Rothenberg gave me for a blurb:
 
Armand Schwerner has been one of the master poets of my time--both in his
great ongoing work _The Tablets_ and in the solitary poems and sequences
assembled here. What he leaves us is a lifetime's work--a gift--original
and pointing back to origins--of thoughts fused into structures,
compactions, that stun the imaginations of those who hear him. The ancients
called it "wisdim poetry," & I know of no contemporary who has been more
into its practice. Schwerner writes here from his own body--and by so
doing, he takes us into new and distant worlds.
 
Enough: What follows is the Bernstein post.
 
 
Poet, Scholar-Translator, Teacher
Armand Schwerner
died at 9:06 this morning.
 
 
go into all the places you're frightened of
and forget why you came, like the dead
[...]
 
from nothing, from nothing, the stone beginning, tell me my name,
when I write and do accounts I am that other man
and keep from trembling, o at the heart's root is not cauldron but ......
come in come in come in come in says my pain
run from the sun, wander around in me and profit, the stars tell North
but little else.
                From nothing from nothing find me my name, say
in some clear way if the end is sadness, how the days of fishing are numbered,
say
whether may name begins in rage or music rooting about for its pleasure
o draw me from my Alabaster Self
my millstone quartz marl me take me from my smooth whiteness my absence
OOualbpaga Dammara Damalo Karhenmou Amagaa ArigaaaAdambpaga
as a night lightens in dream rivers.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[...]
if the end is sadness, how the days of fishing are numbered, say saying I said
begins in rage or music rooting about for pleasure, it must be possible
says my pain, as night lightens in dream rivers. hunger the hunger. say is
............................................................................
..................
............................................................................
......................................
 
 
(from The Tablets)
 
***
 
The funeral will be held this Sunday at Bayport Funeral Home,
683 Montauk Highway (516-472-0122)
11:30-1 Visiting
1pm Service
for further information contact Charles Morrow at
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