Song of Ascents is a collection of inspired moments set to verse. Like Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, it represents a labor of years. But unlike most poetry collections, it describes the circumstances in which the material was conceived, and explores the philosophical and aesthetic considerations which informed it. Together these form a narrative of ascent: from fragmentation to wholeness, from the particulars of one man's life to a consideration of the greater life to which we are called.