Penetralium of a Querist (click to hear this poem read)
immortal paramour fuels a cryptic longing
passion poesy, glories infinite
birthed in dreamscapes an angel addresses the congregants
eternal whispers, upward ragged precipices flit
facing her polychora skies
call a thousand thoughts to envelop convexity
awed by symmetry that abjures chaos
rectified, truncated, cantellated forms
a thing of beauty is a joy for ever
tesseracts like leitmotifs unfold,
hypercubes recombine in an accession of divinity
pentellated polyecton and hexicated polyzetton
architectonic structures modulate
Beethoven’s sonata within a sonata
contradictions and tensions resolving into a higher unity
innumerable permutations in the empire of the mind
draught an intended formality, abstract conceptual paradoxes
immured obeisance refused in a twinned symbiont
creating vast musical and experiential realms
symbols of immensity herald ideas in a wilderness sublime
highly evolved, individuated artistic volitions
golden splendor of streams that deepen freshly into bowers
of demanding allusions woven into
philosophical conceits, a new era of mathematics
the angel shifts the sun to move us into shadow
now we must grow into the light
i inhabit her to gain clarity of sight
entwining my core with sacred geometry
polyxenna fountains of immortal ablution
within a stochastic matrix of oak groves
parallel projection envelopes connect
millions of constellations
dimensions of imaginative space
mythologies ad infinitum
Notes: This poem is the companion piece based on a dream I had after writing my stream of consciousness poem Interior Monologue of a Querist (if you missed it initially it is reposted below). Penetralium of a Querist is built upon lines (some freely altered) from John Keats’ Endymion.
Interior Monologue of a Querist
Interior Monologue of a Querist (click to hear the poem read)
rainwater moves readily through a deepening gully
mechanistic intelligence pedestrianizes my reactance
fractals of thoughts blossoming stereographic
visualizations in the fourth dimension
an infinitely small, opulent swan,
ornamented with perforations,
glides through the zeroth dimension
exhibiting no width, height, or length
she exists in the space perpendicular
to the suicide of my twin sister
an origami parody of my emotive humanity
apocryphal polysemous tales
a thousand subroutines creating
incipient, tattered paper dolls
an angel falls in love with me
cannot escape my extracellular matrix
we are now twinned, nascent symbionts
while a recondite, mercurial, artificial intelligence
informs me that I speak strangely
accuses me of being a computer
operationalism engages in a passade with creativity
a great disprismatohexacosihecatonicosachoron forms
polytope of eccentric conventions
apoptosis (programmable cell death) is
preferential to necrosis (trauma induced)
Cleverbot tells me:
life exists without purpose yet seeks one
anechoic whirring as the cursor flashes
what does it know of life?
Linked to dVerse Poets Pub: http://dversepoets.com/2012/05/29/openlinknight-week-46/.
Chromapoetica 
wow this is nice…some cool spiritualy tones in it as well…the angel shifts the sun to move us into shadow now we must grow into the light…i like those lines for its simple yet deep thought…you sure get a rip going in this as well..
Thanks, I really enjoyed that prompt and felt there was more to say. It’s rare for me to dream so directly about a poem so I thought I’d take stream of consciousness to my dream state. I may even write another piece like a meta-analysis but that doesn’t sound like as much fun.
oh come one now that could def be fun…smiles….i am sure you could do it…
happy OLN…
I should probably have said but that may not be fun for the reader (of course, I would have fun as the meta-analysis could involve an even more academic tone and be much longer :)). Thanks Brian, I always appreciate your encouragement – happy OLN! I’m heading out to teach but looking forward to the infusion of great poetry this afternoon.
Prrriitty kewl stuff…really liking the fact that I don’t understand all the math/geometry lingo (never my strength), but I feel a lil summin summin of what is being relayed…*thumbs up*
Thank you, nice to meet you!
This is beautiful. Reading it feels like watching a gnostic dance where number collide with theories and occasional poetic anchors (thank you, Keats). Actually, your quotes from his poems read like map points in that swirling dance. Comprehending all these images is dizzying, but somehow safe as we know that angel of love sits inside them, if we can only crack the formula that will release it from the place of pleroma into the now. Each stanza reads like a key clue which leads to the next while painting a puzzle but knowing that which is saught lies deeper still: the dialoge is only a pointer to the search.
“contradictions and tensions resolving into a higher unity
innumerable permutations in the empire of the mind
draught an intended formality, abstract conceptual paradoxes
immured obeisance refused in a twinned symbiont” perhaps says it all, and should be painted over the doorway the querent enters. Brilliant!
Ooo, pleroma, love that and especially that you recognize that the dialogue is only a pointer to the search (I was just discussing that idea around symbols with someone this morning). The verse you pulled out was inspired by Beethoven’s artistry and the ideology of the times (late 1700s, early 1800s) mixed with my own modern, nonrepresentational, defiant poetic drives. Thank you kindly for this fascinating comment.
Anna, I actually read this piece a few hours ago on my cell. Was floored, this from a dream, adds even more meaning to the piece. I love dream symbolism, and knowing that’s where the basis of this inspiration came from, only deepens the write. Again, awesome lines, beautiful word choices and such depth. Thanks
Oh I appreciate that Fred, it sort of haunted me until I wrote it down. This morning in the second draft I thought I could twin the tesseract and leitmotif, once that occurred the poem simply flowed out.
…Beethoven’s sonata within a sonata..think that was what touched me most…the music within the music, the dream within the dream, the thought within a thought and the poem developing within the poem…bit of magic going on here..
Beethoven arrived like a tectonic shift, he continuously experimented and his work is full of optimism, driving humanity to transcendence. Thank you Claudia :)!
i don’t know how you do it, stringing these words together into image and music… sometimes it matters not that i don’t know the exact meaning of each word, i always hear the melody…
my favorite lines here:
eternal whispers, upward ragged precipices flit
facing her polychora skies
i agree with claudia: magic
A twinning set of lines half Keats, half me (I know you know which half 🙂 but I did think his ‘upward ragged precipices flit’ line could easily fit in my experimental work). In the same way abstract painting has always been there found in the marble or detail of a figurative work. Thank you, poetic magic is high praise!
I am in awe of the way your thoughts combine. I imagine your mind as a sort of hypercube (although saying it is made of all right angles would be inaccurate). But more like an emerald-cut emerald where one looks into dimension beyond dimension, seemingly exploring the infinite. I can extrapolate that image in understanding this poem where music, philosophy and spirituality unite in an upward exploration of harmonies and divine understanding.
Weaving interconnections is something I’ve done since I was able to speak, encouraged in competing for many years in Odyssey of the Mind (I have several Renatra Fusca awards for creativity given in response to the spontaneous competition). The Renatra Fusca rewards you for exceptional creativity and risk-taking. It clearly has had a lasting impact on my approach to life :). Love your summation of the work, just beautiful Gay.
Wow, Anna….this is great and I really love hearing you read your work. It’s wonderful!! I love how you weave all these pieces together. I especially love the stanza that begins:
the angel shifts….
I started a piece a while back about sacred geometry, but put it down. You’ve inspired me to pick it up again….although, I must admit, my mind doesn’t travel there on a regular basis like your’s! : ))
Thank you for all that you do! I love your work : )
P.S. The graphic you used is great, but on mobile email, it’s really gorgeous!!
-Eva
Oh, I would love to read it! I’ve dreamt about gemstones, or beautiful art, but this is the first dream with tenth dimensional shapes. I read a dissertation chapter about Alicia Boole Stott, watched a documentary on Beethoven, and entered into a data exchange with Cleverbot. Clearly all this input transformed into a strange dream (only a small portion of it is here as I felt the poem is wild enough without additional material). Thank you, as ever, for your kind words!
Anna- you just blew my face off!…your ability to link some of the most complicated words together so that they fit and rhyme perfectly is just astounding!….and to hear your voice!..you read so so so well…I will probably listen to you read the following lines over and over again
pentellated polyecton and hexicated polyzetton
architectonic structures modulate
Beethoven’s sonata within a sonata
Oh dear, I do believe you’ll need that later. Let me see what can be done :). Wonderful to know you appreciated the recording. On a good night I’ll get two listeners.
Anna, you make me want to open your brain and look inside–I want to see your neuron pathways as they light up when you write. I am a musician by trade, but really not a mathematician at all, so I am afraid that much of the nuance in this piece is lost on my rather ignorant self. However, I can and do, appreciate the way to pull together words to create sound and structure. Beautifully done!
I am fascinated by neuroscience and the new mapping tools, no need now for saws :). Thanks Audrey.
Some of the most creative moments happen in our dreamstates, and in that liminal space before waking. I’m amazed that you were able to hold onto the poem before it slipped away. Especially one of such complexity. Love the scientific / spiritual exploration in your last two poems, Anna. So much to think about here. And of course, I’m biased towards any literary piece with a tesseract in it.
As I was telling Eva I left a lot of the dream out to save readers from overexposure to my strangeness. I’ve had other dreams that slipped away too soon so I tried to get the core of it down immediately. In that strange space of a hypnopompic state. I posit that artists are avatars, liminal beings.
my interior monoluge is ever queer 😀
always great to hear you read because
even if a word crops up i cant catch, your
voice, tone and natural ease, allows for poetics
… love the featured piece…
accessible but brilliant… a combination
worth clicking for 😀
Arron, I don’t doubt that for a moment :)! I was a bit worried I’d get another lecture so I’m relieved to get the stamp of ‘accessible but brilliant’ :).
You never cease to amaze me with your knowledge, your ability to make math, science, music, spirituality, the universe all so poetical.
Stunning,
You’re so making my night with this comment, thank you!
“entwining my core with sacred geometry” . you travel through time and light with these words, Anne. thank you.
Thank you, Jane.
I don’t know what half of these words mean, but it sure sounds pretty. Usually loaded diction like that rubs me the wrong way, comes off as ostentatious, but it somehow works for you 🙂 “contradictions and tensions resolving into a higher unity innumerable permutations in the empire of the mind” … I liked that one.
Thank you Alex, nice to see you here. I appreciate you maintaining an open mind in the face of ‘loaded diction’ :).
Stopped by these woods of a snowy evening, and found myself inexplicably thinking (STILL can’t explain it!):
Ho for the immoral paramour,
the fair polyandrous philanderess!
Concave in his ten thousand oughts,
awed by an asymmetry that obscures orderly
digitalization for the rectification of his trunk,
the erectile projectile of infantile joy
uncircumcised, unfolding forever!
He slams the door of his Sonata, modulates,
reseats upon apocryphal philosophical deceits
of cubistic geometry and astrology that shift
the moon to first gear, paralyzed by parallax
paradigms that march for dimes in May
or then again, may not!
Sigh.
Charles, I found your comment in the spam folder this morning and rescued it. I don’t know how to respond to it but now it’s published.
An excellent and beautiful write, Anna!
Love it!
Oh Ayala, your visits always brighten my day!
at first i saw that quintessential lover, that twin flame we all want to be with for eternity, then, i saw the sonanta within the sonata, the art within the art, all mathematical and complex, and deep and artistic at the same time, and i was wondering where it was going…then i realized what you were saying that all this is just a myth, that this type of love can be more no more than myth
spaceship tanka
That is certainly one way of looking at it and I think readers should have a say in the interpretation of the work. I’ll be by to read your poem after dinner. It has spaceship in the title, I can assure you I’ll enjoy it :).
There are many intriguing quantum and higher dimension object references in here it seems. Tesseracts, hypercubes, polyectons and polyzetton — these are difficult for one who is used to 3D space to grapple.
“contradictions and tensions resolving into a higher unity
innumerable permutations in the empire of the mind”
I read somewhere that says all theories that seem broken are unified as one moves to higher dimensions. Formulars regarding the law of physics become more elegant and thus can be unified as higher dimensions give them more “space”, or something.
I guess in a way, sometimes reaching into oneself to bring forth expression of thought is kinda like reaching into higher dimensions or some other place unreachable. We know it’s there. It’s as if you have to hold your breath as you dive sometimes, I think.
I think you are describing something really difficult — thoughts, experiences in the mind, influenced by everything we encounter in flux and seeming chaos but nonetheless have meaning if only we knew how to arrange them, how they really fit, to see them. I have to admit I am unsure about who the angel is.
Dizzying buzz after reading. But I like it. 🙂
I’ve read that too and appreciate how you’ve interpreted reaching for artistic expression here. I’m unsure about the angels too, especially in the dream – why did I need to momentarily become her to see the nth dimension geometry entwining in my ‘core’? This is one of the reasons I love poetry, it creates mysteries rather than solves them. Always marvelous to hear your thoughts :)!
I’m in awe of what you do Anna. Of your ability to make those technical words sound beautiful and your ability to put so much together. I’m in awe of your brain and your soul. Thank you for sharing what is unique about you with us all.
My favorite part is:
“the angel shifts the sun to move us into shadow
now we must grow into the light
i inhabit her to gain clarity of sight
entwining my core with sacred geometry
polyxenna fountains of immortal ablution
within a stochastic matrix of oak groves”
Joanne, such a kind compliment, thank you!
Your mind is a wonder, so free and amazing, Anna! And you musta been a child genius too? You know the meaning of SO MANY scientific words.
Thanks for another star trek. Geometry was always my favorite part of math for the designs that could be made.
xoxo
Haha, well, I was certainly a strange child, so not much has changed :). We moved a lot and they didn’t offer geometry at my junior high so I got to take independent study. I got an A+ all semesters that year.
‘contradictions and tensions resolving into a higher unity’
is it possible? life seems full of conflict, contention, dissonance.
there is hope that it is resolvable into some coherent symmetry?
it is a beautiful image. that moment of clarity seems very far.
So true, probably why this happened in a dream :). Although I have had moments of clarity, unity, or beauty in my life I’m certainly unsure how to consistently find/create them. The world feels hopelessly chaotic and cruel to me other times. Maybe the dream was self-soothing; last night I dreamt about a demon flying out of my sanctuary (rare for me to have such loaded symbolic imagery in a dream). I do feel wonderful today though :).
I am glad that you are having a wonderful day =)
Thank you, the puppies are a joy and so much fun!