Ascend Ascend

by Janaka Stucky, Pam Grossman (Introduction)

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, Ascend Ascend is Janaka Stucky's most powerful book to date.

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.

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.

Genres: Poetry, Magick

88 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2019

About the author

Janaka Stucky is the author of The Truth Is We Are Perfect (Third Man Books, 2015) and the Publisher of Black Ocean as well as its annual poetry journal, Handsome. He is also the author of two chapbooks: Your Name Is The Only Freedom and The World Will Deny It For You. His poems have appeared in such journals as Denver Quarterly, Fence and North American Review, and his articles have been published by The Huffington Post and The Poetry Foundation. He is a two-time National Haiku Champion and in 2010 he was voted “Boston’s Best Poet” in the Boston Phoenix. He is practicing the perfection of effort through right action and joyful participation in the sorrows of the world.

Reviews

[Sean Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book is a powerful experience. It is difficult to read without falling yourself into almost a trance state - the rhythm of the words escapes the page and envelopes the reader, setting the pace and tone of the reading. This is a long poem, and has a motif of repetitive mantras, and yet in reading it there is not a single word that is superfluous or out of place. The energy of the book is electric and overwhelming, so much so that I found I could not write at all for several days afterwards, perhaps out of deference or out of saturation - but when I was able to return to the page, I did so immensely inspired to create something beautiful. This is the best poetic work I have read this year.

[Rachelle Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite poetry collections. The vast theme of blessedness and what it means to be human next to the divine, the breadth and spread of thought, characterizing the existence and experience of the human condition. It's all just so good!

[SadieWhiteCoat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sky like a blade
Of light cutting
The umbilical cord of I I ascend

Sky like primordial honey
I ascend

Sky like mellifluous rot
I ascend

Sky like a garden
Dug with the white edge of a scream I ascend

Maybe I don't get it because I don't believe in God. I don't understand the glory of a deity, or the desire for holiness, or spiritualism in general. I used to think I did, during my 13-year-old phase of collecting crystals and looking longingly at the moon (every queer teenager must have this phase, you understand), but then I realised I don't believe in a higher power in any religious sense. Sure, I believe in the majesty of physics and the beautiful miracle of any sort of existence, or whatever, but simply by living in the universe one is as close to that as one could possibly be, so I feel no need to fast and chant in an old church for 20 days about it.

That being said, I can appreciate poetry that isn't written by someone who shares all of my views. I just didn't really appreciate this one. Though the language was gripping in places, and I enjoyed the visceral way in which Stucky spoke about his faith, it is not one of the better long form poems I've read. I feel that a long form poem should take you on a journey, it should begin in one place and drag you by the hair through the horrible landscape of the poet's inner world, you should feel everything you could possibly feel and come out the other side limp and dazed. Ascend ascend stayed very firmly in one place, which is fine I guess, if you like that place, but I don't personally enjoy spending 60 pages in one place, especially when the poet spends half of those pages saying the same five words over and over again. I ended up feeling like I was trip-sitting Trent Reznor if Trent Reznor was really into runes.

In summary, Thursday by Ariana Reines accomplishes everything this book attempts to. So read that instead. Or if you just want to read some really good long form poems, I'd recommend Crush by Richard Siken, or I'm ok, I'm pig! by Kim Hyesoon.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ascend with agony caparisoned by poppies
By black stars and the shivering
Tissue of vice

I ascend with agony
Drinking fever
Drinking storms
My storms
Drinking storms
I ascend

Beautiful work! Stucky taps into a great consciousness beyond our own. I felt swept up in this experience rather than passively reading about Stucky’s own. The repetition of words formed a magnificent incantation spiraling upward then
leaving us in post climatic silence

silence where even
the noise of nothing does not exist.

[Alley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ecstatic Transgression into the Outside

This long-form poem is a series of first person visions of a kabbalistic ascent, experienced through a lens of horror.

There's not much out there in this genre, so if you're into ecstatic dread, do yourself a favor and buy Ascend Ascend pronto.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

"
Formless
Fathomless insomnia of stars
Through which angels unendingly dream
Of filling their ever widening mouths
With the wet muscles of
Infinite human dead
"

Animated by a prophetic vision in the horror, grace, and awe of the cosmos. I want to dwell and dwell and fight for more space to dwell w/the tectonic capacity of this text.
/
Perfect read when in a depleted state .

[Weronika Sroka]

"Amid the sanctuary of their horror / Their ancient celestine appetite receive me"

I had a moment where I truly felt something. I'd love to read this again sometime, I'm not able to read into it too much as I don't read any poetry, I'm unfamiliar with it. Gripping read though. Felt like he was preaching, inviting us to pray with him.

[Quentin Montemayor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is both frenetic and prayerful. It really begs to be read aloud—which I did not do, but certainly will try in the future. This is one of those works you have to read over and over again to let it seep in.

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Couldn't really get into it, for whatever reason. Stuckys way with words is indeed at times mesmerizing and transporting, but I guess I need another read to delve deeper into his symbolic cosmos and meanings.

[🪞🎠 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ascend with agony the gleaming rib
Of an angel spinning in silent adoration

For the dusk beyond the white gate
I ascend

(23)

A beautiful journey out into heaven, into the innermost caverns of the body, and back out into nothingness. It nearly captures the ineffable feeling of ascension.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book is like taking a spiritual journal to a higher plateau of consciousness.

[Megan Hex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unable to describe. Gorgeous poetry wrapping around the core of the human body, organic experience as ecstatic experience.

[Caitlin Ffrench · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stucky writes in a way that makes my heart ache. This work is heartbreaking and beautiful.