Samuel Taylor Coleridge once introduced to the world that desolated ship journey in his “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”:

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

Ulysses, Noah and Job, so many allusions are hidden in this masterpiece about “a sadder and a wiser man”. And so I wanted to know, which journey will be chosen by GPT-2, a Deep Learning entity, developed by OpenAI to write texts.

And it wrote me a poem.

My input was the four lined stanza, as cited above. And here is the poetic vision by Artificial Intelligence:

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
No balm in his hair:
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink.
Water, water, everywhere,
Yet we like its rarity.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink.
Water, water, everywhere.

Yes, the rarity of the water (everywhere) is striking. Even if the hair is suffering without balm. Probably because you cannot drink a drop.

But the poem was not over. AI was embraced by inspiration.

It was an accident from birth,
An accident from birth:
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink.
Water, water, everywhere,
Till the Pentrucks began to shine
Away a naked Light,
Where all the wings fell
Compared, but not true
Forth with the fierce Ray of Dragons.
Experience
Body animation taste ways,
Tear space loose,
Get from quality of material effect
Out come how much of water?
If marble do we not try
It is not
The Concrete?
Yes indeed, it is —
………………….The Concrete, on in the jet

Marbled water becoming concrete. The poem is hardening.

Russian Avantgardist Daniil Kharms wrote once:

One must write poetry in such as way that if one threw the poem in a window, the pane would break.

I am concerned about condition of my windows after these solid and concrete poems being generated by AI.

Generated?

Or… written?

Heavy, almost scientific style — and suddenly so much light. Shining Pentrucks, Ray of Dragons, naked Light.

But AI was still not satisfied, as it continued with a short synaesthetic intermezzo almost resembling ee cummings’ season songs:

It’s Called Summer,
Winter, Winter —
The lithe Frolic horses weigh
Gold Quality,
On there wheel
Black, bluish, sleazy
Color like sand on a bed but strong

Can you smell this scratchy taste of color: “Black, bluish, sleazy / Color like sand on a bed”?

And the epilogue? AI doesn’t complain about schism between science (here: “scholar”) and literature (here: “snatchers”). It just doesn’t. It’s feeling sad for everyone.

Ideas go throughout future conversation
So science knows
It’s called a stone-dwelling
Is the consonant significantly more easily switched
Between scholar and snatchers
Feeling sad for everyone
I won’t complain
Literature

Let’s just stone-dwell! This is the only way, my dear friends.

P.S. Every Friday a narrative collaboration with AI will be published here. It’s FridAI.