Ascend Ascend. Janaka Stucky

to its thrall, poets instead take on the impossible task of trying to pin the wings of the ineffable with words. In doing so, they grant the reader a bit of flight as well. Ascend Ascend touches upon this paradox, for it is also a poem about language. Alphabets, intonations, and supernatural syllables are referenced throughout the work. Stucky is engaging in “adamic / Choreography,” putting names to things with the elated mania of first man. I thought about this, too, as I finished reading it to the woods, and then found myself looking around stupefied. Adam’s own name comes from adamah, meaning “earth,” and in stringing the world with words, he created it anew, before being swallowed up by it once more.