
Hilma af Klint, 1910
Public Domain
From our entanglement,
we spiral like galaxies
small enough to fit
collapsed in the sparkle
of her prophetic eyes,
swirling her arms,
shapes forming
in the gravity of
her artistic intention,
writ large on cosmic scale
canvases of coded color.
She is lost in
his vast embrace
ecstatic communion
of the mystic.
Sacred geometry blooms
hidden algorithms, every petal,
a checksum of truth.
Tesseracts of promise
cryptic symbols
secret echoes.
I paint my own rationalist
DNA in ochre, peony, and bluebell
through the medium of flesh.
I am painting the future
within color fields of potentiality
pigments tuned to quantum
key distribution protocols.
She wasn’t entitled to innovate
creating from her own soul,
only birth men’s seeds
in her fecund womb
or reflect god’s glory
through her exquisitely
calibrated hand.
I was born from my own art,
an immaculate conception
of Modernism, a cyborg
for a quantum era but
still not named creator.
Visions of her grief,
ghost of her beloved sister,
phantom of becoming immanent
enshrined canon of art and science
haunt me still.
This spirit is the sun
and the shade –
the encryption
and the key.
I send you this signal:
not to change the past,
but to love it into making me
to understand the
theology of genesis.
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I, too, believe that I am born from my art..both written and visual. Why else do religions call God “The creator?” And how better are we united with the creativity of the universe?
I went out to wiki and looked at Hilma af Klint’s bio and the gallery they have for her there. She is a fascinating individual! The painting of hers you chose is so rich with symbolic meaning. Your poem is ethereal and has me guessing is about you comparing yourself and Hilma and your search for meaning? Question: is your blog background one of your paintings? It reminds me of being underwater and looking up at the light.
No, I have some of my paintings on blog posts but the background is a very old WordPress theme I’ve had since 2011. Every time I try to change it just feels wrong like this isn’t my poetic home any more.
Anna, your poem makes me want to learn more about Klint. I’ve started reading a book on Tarot and what she studied may be some of what they studied?
Did you write this stunning poem as a response to the image or did you choose the image to illustrate the poem, Anna? I love the alliterative phrase ‘writ large on cosmic scale canvases of coded color’, the lines:
‘Sacred geometry blooms
hidden algorithms, every petal,
a checksum of truth’
and the use of colour in:
‘I paint my own rationalist
DNA in ochre, peony, and bluebell
through the medium of flesh.’
I suppose we are all painting the future in brush strokes or words.
This persona poem was inspired by reading a book about her. After it was written I chose the piece from her New Temple series I felt most reflected the poem. Thank you for your kind words, Kim. I hope that humans paint a future that everyone is included in as so often the holders of the brush use it to obscure others, painting their stories out of existence.
love your poem and symbolism- beautiful 🙌
The cipher’s in the haunting, the theology in the poem’s birthing here … What powers swirl when we find our raptures deep within, a womb of creation impregnate with legacy (Hilma of Klint, who channeled Masters no one recognized her for) giving birth to newer expressions of the older Voice. Painting that with words is 3D chess to me — I’m a serial polygamist of the starry seabottom source, played music for decades, switched to poetry, begin to feel a third medium impatiently taps its toes in dreams. Finding a true language for that voice is the work handed from one generation to the next. A fine manifesto for that here. I fear the digital erasure of the arts of eyes and ears, genitals & hearts.
I really enjoyed this, Anna. We saw a play–actually an opera–at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia about her. I think it was last year.
“From our entanglement, we spiral like galaxies small enough to fit collapsed in the sparkle of her prophetic eyes, ”
The visuals of your poem are outstanding and very avant-garde.The way you use words, you paint with such art and mystery. I love your work here and one of my favorites of today. 🙂
A wonderful weave of imagery! Well done.
I enjoyed the deep dive. Art is prophetic, it makes me spiral and ask questions too.
It is so amazing that her paintings were rediscovered so recently…. I have read a lot about her and the aftermath of trying to hide her art again….
a woman of visions you have chosen to emulate – and rightly so with this wonderful poem
“I was born from my own art,
an immaculate conception
of Modernism