The photo above shows me (left) and Greg (right) as we’re about to leave for the 1989 National Scout Jamboree in Washington, DC. By that point, we had spent a lot of our early life together–same elementary school, Cub Scouts, Webelos, and then, Boy Scouts.
On the long bus ride to the Jamboree, he assembled a plastic model kit of the USS Enterprise USS-1701-D. Imagine his determination to build that model while the bus is bouncing around on the roadbed and young boys are shouting and carrying on around him. He laid out his sprues in the flimsy cardboard box–full color lid inverted to hold the plain cardboard bottom–and applied bits of modeling cement from a metal Testors tube to bind and hold the bits together. I thought that he was out of his mind to build that model on the trip, but he wasn’t out of his mind–he was focused. It meant something to him. It gave him an escape and outlet from everything else going on around him. It channeled his love of Star Trek: The Next Generation into something tangible and real–bringing the utopian world on the screen into a moment of his real lived experience.
Some years before that trip, I spent an afternoon with Greg at his house. We pulled out his older brother Jeff’s precious Star Wars toys–carefully preserved in their original boxes and meticulously stored in his bedroom closet–for otherworldly battles in outer space. We assembled the Kenner Death Star playset and strafed its villains with an X-Wing and the Millennium Falcon.
Greg was an aficionado of great toy lines based on children’s cartoons. He had an extensive collection of action figures from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and he proudly showed off the Miraj with a full compliment of heroes from Silverhawks. I can safely say that I’m as impressed now as I was then. And, I was awfully glad we got to play with them together.
Even earlier, I remember being sick in elementary school. I might have missed a week of school. When I returned to classes, I didn’t have a lot of get-up-and-go. Greg became my companion during PE–we would walk the track beside Glyndale Elementary School. While we walked, we talked about all sorts of things–things that I can’t recall but feel like something important, meaningful, revelatory.
An even earlier memory is of Greg, me, and a bunch of other boys pretending to be Transformers in the expansive field behind Glyndale. Sideswipe was my preferred character. Greg, however, took it to the next level as Megatron–nailing his character’s raspy electronic voice and striking an imposing silhouette with his arm canon raised.
The last time that I saw Greg was June 16, 2018. I had visited his parents Wayne and Faye–my Boy Scout Scoutmaster and Cub Scout Pack Leader respectively. Greg happened to be home, so I got to catch up with him some, too. Our lives had diverged in significant ways, but he was still the same determined and playful guy I had know in my youth. However, I also sensed there was a gap between who we were and who we had become that couldn’t be bridged in a brief visit.
Greg passed away last Monday on 1 Jul. 2024–about six weeks shy of his 47th birthday. Looking at his LinkedIn profile, it seems like he was still moving forward–starting his own company and getting certifications in cybersecurity, which makes the unexpected news that much harder to bear. Even when the bonds of friendship have frayed with time, we still can’t help wanting our old friends’ dreams come true and feeling heartbreak when they don’t.
Y and I know this blue atlas cedar as “Big Tree Friend.” It grows somewhere in the middle of Green-Wood Cemetery. We walk around–turning here and there–until we eventually find it.
It has been growing in Green-Wood Cemetery for over 100 years–assuming it was planted soon after the death of the person it memorializes, Joseph Kinyoun (Nov. 25, 1860-Feb. 14, 1919). Its circumference is so large that I don’t think Y and I could join hands around it.
When you stand beneath it, it complete envelops you.
On a hot day, it’s a good friend to have shade you.
A few nights ago while waiting to drift off to sleep I was thinking about Lanier’s Oak in Brunswick, Georgia and it’s namesake’s 1878 poem “The Marshes of Glynn.” The marshes that Sidney Lanier saw in the mid-to-late 1800s would be transformed by the shipping and shipbuilding in the Brunswick Port and the industrial chemical works at what used to be Hercules. Now, global warming and climate change will continue reshaping those marshes and eventually envelop them under the rising ocean waters.
For this post, I experimented with two generative AI systems to imagine the future of the marshes of Glynn–the first visually and the second textually.
For the textual imagining, I wanted to use a text generative AI to rewrite Sidney Lanier’s “The Marshes of Glynn” in light of the climate change that will ultimately transform the marshes. To do this, I used oobabooga’s text-generation-webui and ggerganov’s llama.cpp to load sophosympathia’s midnight-miqu-70B-v1.5 large language model.
Midnight Miqu 70B is an uncensored model that is capable of outputting all sorts of text–good and bad. But there’s a lot of evidence at this point that censored models become lobotomized due to the built-in censorship. It’s almost like with a person–it takes the good and the bad to create something new and meaningful. LLMs and image generating AIs only work well when they are uncensored. Ultimately, it comes down to how the human operator uses generative AI–for good or ill. The same is true for most tools and technology. Disneyfication of these models only serves to shield their creators from liability and results in dumbed-down tools that are incapable of fulfilling their promise to enable human operators to do more than they could alone. Using an uncensored model like Midnight Miqu 70B gives the human operator access to an improved imagination, diction, and reasoning, which is why I chose it for this task.
After engaging in a chat with Midnight Miqu 70B, I gave it this prompt followed by a copy of Lanier’s original poem (shown below in the left column). My prompt included some background details, such as defining eco-criticism, which would activate connections to those other words. I contextualized when the poem was written and how things might change in the future that the new poem should capture. To shape the type of poem, I included key terms such as lament, elegiac, and apocalyptic. The poem in the right column below is the one written by Midnight Miqu 70B.
You are a renowned poet with many accolades who focuses on eco-critcism, or the literary study that focuses on ecology, environmentalism, global warming, climate change, and rising sea levels. For this task, please rewrite Sidney Lanier's poem "The Marshes of Glynn" in your own words as a lament on the effects of human-made climate change. It's important to think about the facts that Lanier wrote his poem almost 150 years ago and the marshes of Glynn that Lanier writes about in his poem is in Brunswick, Georgia, which is on the southeastern coast of the United States. Due to rising sea levels, the marshes of Glynn will likely be underwater in the next 50-100 years. With that in mind, here is the poem that I would like you to use as the basis of your poem--go through it line by line and rewrite it from your eco-critical perspective so that The Marshes of Glynn poem is in dialog with your new elegiac and apocalyptic poem.
“The Marshes of Glynn” (1878)
Sidney Lanier
Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,– Emerald twilights,– Virginal shy lights, Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, Of the heavenly woods and glades, That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;– Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire,– Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire, Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,– Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves, Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood, Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;– O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine, While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine; But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest, And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West, And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,– Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore, And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,– Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face The vast sweet visage of space. To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn, For a mete and a mark To the forest-dark:– So: Affable live-oak, leaning low,– Thus–with your favor–soft, with a reverent hand, (Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!) Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand On the firm-packed sand, Free By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea. Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land. Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl. Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky! A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade, Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, To the terminal blue of the main. Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? Somehow my soul seems suddenly free From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn. Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God: I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies In the freedom that fills all the space ‘twixt the marsh and the skies: By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God: Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn. And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be: Look how the grace of the sea doth go About and about through the intricate channels that flow Here and there, Everywhere, Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow In the rose-and-silver evening glow. Farewell, my lord Sun! The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run ‘Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir; Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; And the sea and the marsh are one. How still the plains of the waters be! The tide is in his ecstasy. The tide is at his highest height: And it is night. And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep Roll in on the souls of men, But who will reveal to our waking ken The forms that swim and the shapes that creep Under the waters of sleep? And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn.
“Lost Marshes of Glynn” (2024)
Midnight-Miqu-70B-v1.5
In the shadowed embrace of live-oaks, once proudly entwined, Where vines whispered secrets to lovers who’d intertwine, Now stand sentinels mourning in emerald twilight confined, As the marshes of Glynn weep for a world they defined. Virginal lights once shy, now bear witness to plight, Where woods once heavenly whispered are cloaked in despair’s blight; The arras of leaves that shielded from day’s harshest light, Now tremble with fear at the specter of night. Oak and vine, your braids now unraveled by time’s cruel hand, While I sought refuge in shade, you bore witness to land That grew weary from mankind’s relentless command, And sank ‘neath the weight of a burden so grand. When noon was young and your hearts were ablaze with delight, You cradled my spirit through each fleeting daylight; But now as the sun takes his leave from our sight, I am haunted by shadows that marshes once fought. To the edge of this wood, where the beach does expand, A glimmer of hope in a world so unplanned, Where the sea’s tender kiss meets the shore’s gentle sand, In this union, I find my stand. Marsh-grass once vibrant, now faded and frail, Stretches to skies that no longer prevail; The terminal blue of the main seems so pale, As it swallows the marsh in its jail. What secrets do you hold, oh marshes so free? Where once life abounded, now only a plea: For mercy from humans who took without care, Leaving your beauty to despair. Ye plains of the sea, how you’ve suffered in vain, Bearing the brunt of our greed and disdain; Through floods and droughts, through sun’s fiery reign, You remain steadfast, though in silent pain. As I gaze on your vastness, my heart does implore, What creatures lurk beneath when the tide is no more? In the depth of night, what forms do you bore? O marshes of Glynn, tell me once more! The sea’s generous flow now a harbinger of woe, Filling your veins with saltwater’s slow grow; Your lifeblood ebbing as the tides overflow, And nightfall descends like a shroud below. Sleep may come softly to those who reside, But what dreams disturb you in this silent tide? What visions of loss do your waters provide, As we slumber while you slowly subside? Farewell, great Sun! Your fiery reign is undone, The creeks overflow, and the marshes become one; With the sea that has claimed what was never its own, And nightfall’s embrace in a mournful tone. In this stillness of waters so vast, Where once life danced to your rhythmic cast, Now lies a tomb for the future unborn, As we face the truth that you can’t outlast. What mysteries dwell where the tide meets the shore? When will humans learn what they must restore? O marshes of Glynn, in your silent roar, Teach us to cherish forevermore.
While I gave it the instruction to rewrite Lanier’s poem, it obviously wrote a much shorter poem. However, when you read these side-by-side, you can see phrases and lines that connect the latter to the former. With the LLMs that I can use at home on my computer, they don’t have a conception of word count or number of sentences or lines. They do tend to do well with lists (e.g., write a list of 10 things). It’s might be possible to number the lines in Lanier’s poem and provide instructions to have the outputted lines match the line numbers of the input. That will be an experiment for another day.
Artist Michelle Angela’s Nuestro Andar Florece (Our Journey Blooms) is near the corner of 23rd Street and 5th Avenue in Brooklyn. It inventive use of colors and gradients, figures and hands, and symbolism make it a work worth seeking out. More details about it being a celebration of Mexican immigrant women’s stories and how it came to be are on the artist’s website here.
The above-ground Ditmas Avenue subway station is a nice place to watch the trains come and go because the track extends into the distance in both directions. At the underground stations, you tend to only see the headlights reflected off the tiled walls before the train pulls into platform. We saw this F-train from a long distance away at dusk before it finally pulled up for us to board.
