Lights from a Ship

I keep trying to find ways to test Midjourney, and today I had an inspiration. Such that it was. I would take one of my poems written years ago and feed it into the bot to see what images it developed in response. I decide on one with a lot of imagery. What I provide below is a presentation of separate stanzas that I fed into Midjourney as a text prompt and then the 4-image cluster it generated to give the reader an idea of the breadth of Midjourny’s interpretation. First, the poem.

Lights from a ship.

There is a place on this planet where all
must go alone, a scene where ocean meets
land, where civilization ceases and the
gathering of destruction never ends.

The air there fills with a wet fog
familiar to even Homer and the cry
of water fowl, like that of pterodactyls,
clashes and rolls with the concussion

of waves on shore. Sand sips a broth-like
sea, made of time’s quarry, that dips and
rushes among dunes, then marches through
inland marshes, dissolving and decaying.

Fresh gusts of wind bring soft salt drops
and the smell of life’s renewed debris, and
the sun rests permanently below the horizon,
providing just the absence of darkness, perhaps

for the staging of a Sophoclean play. I walk
into waves, smelling ruin and stare out to sea,
into darkness, searching for lights from
a ship that sails beyond these marsh lands,

a ship that sails to a shore where all is
forgiven and life does not decay giving
life, where life follows life, not by
consequence but by choice.

Next comes my interaction with Midjourney. At times I had to use a few words from the next stanza to ensure the prompt made sense. I started with the title alone. (If you click on an image, you should get a larger version.) I follow each stanza and Midjourney image concerning it with my thoughts about how the bot helped me understand and relate to my own poem. I could sum it up by saying that it was as if I had read it to a group and opened it up for discussion. The four images for each stanza instead of a single image help provide a sense of different perspectives from the imagined individual group members. Here goes:

Lights from a Ship

Images 1a 1b 1c 1d

First of all, the title “Lights from a Ship” is a foreshadowing of the lines “searching for lights from / a ship that sails beyond these marsh lands” from Stanza 7. I associate hope with the word “lights”, a hopeful longing to be found or perhaps some other help from a kind source. Image 1a to me indicates a community or even search vehicle that set out to find the narrator and solve his woes. Image 1b with its forward-projecting light beams indicates a structured and determined effort to locate him. Images 1c & 1d possibly indicate a frantic attempt.

There is a place on this planet where all
must go alone, a scene where ocean meets
land, where civilization ceases and the
gathering of destruction never ends.

Images 2a 2b 2c 2d

The images 2a &2c with their planetary themes and lone figure staring out to sea definitely capitalize on the principle ideas of the stanza concerning universality and individuality of the line “where all must go alone”. Images 2b & 2d capitalize on the idea that “destruction never ends”. So much astronomy reinforces the universal nature of the narrative. The strongest emotional reaction I have to the images is one of loneliness in the face of destruction at the civilization level.

The air there fills with a wet fog
familiar to even Homer and the cry
of water fowl, like that of pterodactyls,
clashes and rolls with the concussion

Images 3a 3b 3c 3d

These seashore images certainly fit the text, although I was surprised that Midjourney didn’t put a pterodactyl in any of the four images. The references to Homer and an extinct bird would certainly have added a dated depth to the visualization and to the universal theme of the text. But they do present excellent visualization of the first (“The air there fills with a wet fog”) and last (clashes and rolls with the concussion”) lines. In the prompt I also used a part of the first line from the next stanza (“of waves on shore”), and these are represented in all their glory. What I got from the images was a verification of nature’s pounding of the coastline, sort of representation of the clashes within nature also expressed within the nature of mankind. That is something the narrator seems to be struggling with—the cosmic struggle within nature at all levels and within himself.

of waves on shore. Sand sips a broth-like
sea, made of time’s quarry, that dips and
rushes among dunes, then marches through
inland marshes, dissolving and decaying.

Image 4a 4b 4c 4d

Here is perhaps the sleeper images of the whole set. They depict the final processes that consume the dead and return the remains to the soil. I noticed particularly that images 4b & 4c were of dead-ended inland streams from the sea. The end of everything. Even images 4a & 4d have a sense of stagnation. The situation has gone beyond struggle and destruction into a cesspool of rot, perhaps representing a turning point in the poem to go beyond clash and decay.

Fresh gusts of wind bring soft salt drops
and the smell of life’s renewed debris, and
the sun rests permanently below the horizon,
providing just the absence of darkness, perhaps

Image 5a 5b 5c 5d

When thinking about poetry, I like to get beyond what can be seen as pretentiousness by throwing in celebrated figures from the past and see if they actually provide a sense of timelessness of the human spirit needed in the poem. And of course here I believe it does. From the beginning the narrator has talked about the universality of the clash between mankind, nature and the processes inherent in a planetary world. After sinking to the bottom in the previous narratives, here is “the smell of life’s renewed debris.” And here through Midjourney, we have this renewal as a setting “for the staging of a Sophoclean play”. (In the prompt the words “for the staging of a Sophoclean play” from the next stanza were also used.) And the question then becomes: Is that renewal reflected in Midjourney’s images prompted by those lines? We see lone figures in towering landscapes and seemingly still under threat. But Sophocles wrote tragedies, and even in the face of renewal a new struggle always evolved out of the past. That fourth image seems to sense “time’s quarry”, a reminder of nature ever stalking us.

for the staging of a Sophoclean play. I walk
into waves, smelling ruin and stare out to sea,
into darkness, searching for lights from
a ship that sails beyond these marsh lands,

Image 6a 6b 6c 6d

Here we have movement toward resolution. The narrator says, “I walk into waves, smelling ruin and stare out to sea” and we then realize he is trying to escape this world he has lived in. He stares “into darkness, searching for lights from a ship that sails beyond these marsh lands”. All four of Midjourney’s images are tracking dead-on here. Each shows our narrator from behind as he wades through water looking out to sea for lights from that fabled ship. In images 7a & 7b, we do see a ship but no lights, the planet always falling a little short of his hopes and expectations. But in image 7c, we see the flora and fauna bending inward around him, creating practically a wormhole for him to emerge from and enter a new world shown in the background with a lighted landscape on the horizon. But still no ship that would enable him to get there. In image 7d, we see not a ship but a lighthouse, and a large one, that stands among perhaps the land he seeks. The water in front of him seems shallow and well lit, perhaps indicating a path forward.

a ship that sails to a shore where all is
forgiven and life does not decay giving
life, where life follows life, not by
consequence but by choice.

Image 7a 7b 7c 7d

And that brings us to the grand finale. Here the words that are just devastating are these: “a ship that sails to a shore where all is forgiven”. It seems that what has been on the narrator’s mind all along is forgiveness for his own sins. We then realize that perhaps he has provided his contribution to the “gathering of destruction never ends” that has produced his desire to escape. Here before us, provided by Midjourney, are his escape vehicles. And regardless of which one of the four you select, they don’t appear all that seaworthy. Particularly 7d that has an impossible tree growing out of the deck. Plus the tree is showing signed of autumn, a harbinger of a hard winter ahead. But the surf has quieted greatly, and perhaps he has found his ship to take him to that land of forgiveness even if it isn’t the panacea for which he had hoped.

Next I input the entire text of the poem into Midjourney as a single prompt. This is what it returned:

Image 8a 8b 8c 8d

This is a much darker—both literal and figurative—interpretation by Midjourney than we received from inputting the stanzas individually. It’s almost as if our narrator has found a ship to take him to that “shore where all is / forgiven and life does not decay giving / life, where life follows life, not by / consequence but by choice.” But the ship seems to have lost its way and is now itself searching for that foreign shore of redemption.

At first, I wasn’t sure what to think of all this. I waited a few days before I published it online. Then I remembered how I slaved over the poem. How I never really understood it or where it came from or the depth of its symbolism. I never felt that it was complete. But now, having been through it with Midjourney as a companion, I believe I appreciate it more. Not only that, I believe I understand myself and what had happened to me that caused those words to erupt from my subconscious. All in all, a very favorable experience.

Keep in mind that Midjourney is never literal. But does it give the poem life? Substance? Or does it detract from the reader’s own visual reaction to the poem? Perhaps it adds another dimension? I often thought so. Perhaps each reader will have a different reaction.

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