Wallace Stevens' "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" Visualized
AI Images Combined with Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens, “the Bard of the Board,” strikes again with his poem The Emperor of Ice-Cream, aided and abetted by AI images.
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Microsoft Image Creator refused to generate an image for the stanza above and showed me this warning message:
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
I got the same “Content Warning” as shown above for this one, too; probably because it sounds mean, or more likely because of the word “horny” (I previously was denied an image of the Ruby-breasted [some type of bird] apparently because of the word “breasted”); I appreciate the caution on the part of the AI robots and their handlers (Robot Wranglers?), but it shows that AI has a ways to go yet.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
