I keep trying to find ways to test Midjourney, and today a had an inspiration. Such that it was. I would take one of my poems written years ago and feed it into the bot and 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 Mindjourny’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 times 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 just 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.)

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 times 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.

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

I’m not sure what to think of all this. I waited a few days before I published it online. Keep in mind that Midjourney is never literal. But does it give the poem life? Substance? Or does it detract from the reader generated images from the poem prompts? Perhaps it adds another dimension to the poem? Perhaps each reader will have a different reaction.