Ascend Ascend

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Signed limited hardcover edition also available here. “Janaka Stucky is extraordinary, and his work riveting.” —Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin Equal parts Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain,” Ascend Ascend makes us both passenger and witness as we participate in the ecstatic destruction of the self through its union with the divine. The long poem was written over the course of twenty days, coming in and out of trance states brought on by intermittent fasting and somatic rituals while secluded in the tower of a 100-year-old church. If you experienced Stucky's first book, The Truth is We are Perfect, for Third Man Books, then Ascend Ascend is a must read. Rooted in the Jewish mystical tradition of Hekhalot literature, which chronicles an ascent up the Kabbalistic Tree of Life to witness the Merkabah, or “chariot of God,” this book-length poem drafts a surreal, mythological landscape in which maximalist language shreds the natural world. Light becomes rainbowed sex. Intestines tangle into an aria. The sky is gallowed. At the center of this apocalyptic devastation stands the speaker of these poems, asserting: I explode. I shall love. I ascend. Stucky’s verse reminds us that even as we sink deeper and deeper into unknown darkness, we become our own flashlight beaming outward. “A dreamlike power” — Publishers Weekly “Ascend Ascend is a passionate trance poem of praise, incantation and divination. It scries into the future with aspiration …” — Anne Waldman, author of Trickster Feminism “A genuine return to a poetry of extasis, both in experience & in language. Breathtaking and wonderful, I’m truly delighted to add Ascend Ascend to my repertory of contemporary works.” — Jerome Rothenberg, editor of Technicians of the Sacred Author: Janaka Stucky Janaka Stucky is a two-time National Haiku Champion, and the author of four poetry collections including Ascend Ascend (Third Man Books, 2019). Janaka incorporates esoteric influences & occult rituals into his work to develop a trance poetics, which he has taught or performed in over 60 cities around the world. He has also collaborated with a variety of musicians, including cellist Lori Goldston (Nirvana), Jim Jarmusch's group SQÜRL, and the iconic doom metal band Sleep. His writing has appeared in a variety of publications such as The Huffington Post and Poetry Foundation—and has been profiled in The Believer, Vice, and BOMB Magazine. Show more