Janaka Stucky

The Truth Is We Are Perfect is my first full-length collection of poetry and the first single-author title published by Jack White’s press, Third Man Books. Across fifty-four lyric poems, the book follows a self broken open by erotic loss—destroyed through the adoration of another, then gradually recreated within that person’s absence.

The poems emerged from a somatic ritual I began developing in 2008. Writing late at night by candlelight, accompanied by meditation, physical repetition, and music, I learned to enter a state in which the poem felt less composed than received. That practice changed the voice of my work and began my ongoing exploration of poetry as ritual: not simply language that describes transformation, but language used to enact it.

Moving through heartache, renunciation, mystical desire, and rebirth, the collection treats loss as a form of spiritual initiation. Its short lyrics operate as fragments, prayers, spells, and incantations. The beloved remains both intimate and unknowable—a force through which the boundaries of the self are repeatedly dissolved and remade.

Following its publication, I toured the book through more than thirty-five performances in its first year, including literary spaces, music festivals, galleries, and unconventional venues. These performances marked an important shift in my practice as I began treating the reading itself as a composed encounter shaped by voice, duration, atmosphere, and the collective attention of an audience.

Selected Press

The Kenyon Review
“Recreating a Miraculous Object: Janaka Stucky’s The Truth Is We Are Perfect”

Publishers Weekly
Review of The Truth Is We Are Perfect

Poetry Society of America
“On ‘Recreating a Miraculous Object’”

Largehearted Boy
Book Notes: the music and ritual behind The Truth Is We Are Perfect