How do you feel when you see a gutter snipe
coming from Ms Woolf’s pen, and is that shiver
a sign of elevated social awareness or the fact
that we keep the sentiment while updating the vocabulary—
something with ‘challenged’ at the end, perhaps—
just as the stack of cups next to the sink
is no longer clutter but a measuring device
that marks the passage of time?
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Mr Honk detested subtitles—
he always felt that the author either needed an excuse
for not coming up with a better title in the first place
or treated the readers like a bunch of halfwits,
which was mostly unrequited, since they had paid the charge,
tax included, and could only complain after having to deal
with his mental excursions—
yet Yethindra Vityala’s caught him
by surprise.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
The thunderstorm season, with its usual titillations
and occasional remarks on lost virginity, had begun
with a rumbling on the windowsill and a heavenly groan
that woke him in the morning to a fundamental question:
Can one read the Great Romantics in sweatpants
or the Modernists in a tailcoat? Apparently,
even atheists like Mr Honk have their grave Sunday
dilemmas.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Like an indiscriminate drop cap,
Mr Honk sat within the margins
and ran deep into the paragraph,
for he had not been born to fit
into any of the respectable social roles—
nor was he ever meant to—
doomed to disappoint even if he tried,
yet he felt a smidgen of nostalgia
at discovering that he was not alone
in finding most novels to be
impossibly futile affairs.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Some time ago, I asked LLaMA AI to write an essay on my poem The Perfect End. The result was two distinct texts: one reflective and informal, the other academic in tone. Both took the poem seriously—perhaps more seriously than I expected. It gave me an idea: what if I invited other AIs to join the conversation?
Below is a third essay, written by ChatGPT. It offers yet another perspective—less academic than the second, but perhaps a bit more lyrical in its reading. I’m publishing these not to prove any point, but to see what happens when human ambiguity meets machine interpretation.
You’ll find the original poem here, and the first two AI-generated essays here and here.
In his poem The Perfect End, Maciej Modzelewski imagines a quiet kind of extinction—not grand, not mourned, not mythologized. Just a man, a cottage, a cemetery nearby, and the alphabet ticking softly in the background.
How convenient would it be to live in a cottage
next to a cemetery?
So begins the poem, not with drama, but with dry speculation. There’s something gently heretical about the question. It suggests proximity to death—not as threat, but as a kind of ease. The speaker isn’t interested in death as spectacle. They’re more concerned with the terms of proximity: where to live, what matters, and how to reject the “ghastly conventionalities of days of yore” that so often drape the dead in someone else’s idea of dignity.
Modzelewski’s voice is crisp, unsentimental, and wry. The poem operates like a quiet refusal. Refusal of legacy, of solemn ritual, of meaning carved into stone. Instead, it offers something else: the possibility of existing without spectacle, without performance—even at the threshold of nonexistence.
you should never deny yourself
the simple pleasure of inadequacy…
This is the hinge of the poem, and its most dangerous idea. The simple pleasure of inadequacy is not self-pitying. It’s not defeatist. It’s almost celebratory. It rejects the modern obsession with impact, relevance, legacy. The speaker doesn’t seek greatness. They seek something smaller, softer, maybe even more honest: the comfort of having nothing to prove.
The most haunting image arrives near the end:
just because a bench plaque
would be the only befitting abridgement of your meagre existence
after wandering through life at the speed of the alphabet.
Here, the poem pulls back the curtain on the whole edifice of legacy. What remains? A bench. A plaque. Perhaps a name, unread. The final line—“at the speed of the alphabet”—is as close to a metaphysical shrug as language allows. Life is not a crescendo. It’s a sequence. Letter after letter. Not meaningless, but never monumental.
What Modzelewski achieves in just seven lines is a distilled rejection of our culture’s death-fantasies. No blaze of glory, no tragic climax, no need for the last word. Just a life lived adjacent to endings, quietly, as if to say: even the unremembered have their place.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
Yesterday I asked AI to write an essay on my poem “The Perfect end”. The result was interesting, but probably nothing more than a high school student would write. So I decided to ask for an academic-level essay, and this is what I got.
In “The Perfect end,” Maciej Modzelewski presents a thought-provoking poem that challenges societal norms and conventions surrounding mortality, identity, and the human experience. Through a nuanced exploration of themes and imagery, Modzelewski invites readers to reconsider the significance of individuality and the impact of conformity on human existence. This essay will examine the poem’s central themes, exploring the intersections of mortality, nonconformity, and the search for meaning in a seemingly indifferent world.
The poem’s opening lines, “How convenient would it be to live in a cottage / next to a cemetery?” (Modzelewski, 2025), may initially seem morbid or unsettling. However, upon closer examination, they reveal a profound fascination with mortality. This fascination is reminiscent of the existentialist philosophies of Martin Heidegger, who posited that human existence is characterised by its finite nature (Heidegger, 1962). Heidegger’s concept of “Being-towards-death” highlights the inherent awareness of mortality that shapes human existence. Modzelewski’s poem can be seen as an exploration of this concept, where the proximity to the cemetery serves as a constant reminder of the transience of life.
The poem introduces the theme of nonconformity, as the speaker declares, “it’s your choice / what matters to you, so you should never deny yourself / the simple pleasure of inadequacy” (Modzelewski, 2025). This rejection of societal expectations is reminiscent of the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, who advocated for individualism and the rejection of traditional morality (Nietzsche, 1883). The speaker’s celebration of “inadequacy” can be seen as a manifestation of this Nietzschean ideal, where the individual prioritizes their own values and desires above societal norms.
The image of the bench plaque in the poem serves as a potent symbol of the speaker’s existence. The plaque, as a physical marker of the speaker’s life, represents the external validation of their identity. However, the speaker’s description of it as “the only befitting abridgement of your meagre existence” (Modzelewski, 2025) suggests a sense of irony and critique towards the notion of external validation. This can be seen as a commentary on the societal expectation of reducing a person’s life to a simple plaque or epitaph, neglecting the complexities and nuances of human experience.
The final line of the poem, “after wandering through life at the speed of the alphabet” (Modzelewski, 2025), is a powerful image that warrants closer examination. The alphabet, as a symbol of language and meaning, serves as a metaphor for the speaker’s journey through life. The speed of the alphabet implies a sense of rapidity and perhaps even arbitrariness, highlighting the fleeting nature of human existence. This image is reminiscent of the philosophical ideas of Paul Virilio, who explored the relationship between speed and human experience in his concept of “dromology” (Virilio, 1977). Virilio argues that speed has become a fundamental aspect of modern life, shaping our perceptions and experiences. In the context of Modzelewski’s poem, the speed of the alphabet can be seen as a manifestation of this dromological perspective, where the rapid pace of life renders individual experiences ephemeral and fragmented.
Furthermore, the image of the alphabet as a symbol of language and meaning raises questions about the nature of communication and understanding. As Ludwig Wittgenstein notes in his Philosophical Investigations, “The limits of my language are the limits of my world” (Wittgenstein, 1953). The speaker’s journey through life at the speed of the alphabet suggests a sense of disorientation and confusion, highlighting the complexities of human communication and the search for meaning.
The title of the poem, “The Perfect end,” is a phrase that warrants closer examination. The word “perfect” implies a sense of completion or resolution, while the word “end” suggests a sense of finality. However, the poem’s exploration of mortality, nonconformity, and the search for meaning suggests that the perfect end may be an unattainable ideal. Instead, the poem presents a vision of human existence characterised by complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty. This ambiguity is reminiscent of the literary works of Samuel Beckett, who explored the themes of existentialism and absurdity in his writings. In Beckett’s novel The Unnamable, the protagonist declares, “I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on” (Beckett, 1953). This sense of uncertainty and ambiguity is reflected in Modzelewski’s poem, where the perfect end remains an elusive and perhaps unattainable goal.
In “The Perfect end,” Maciej Modzelewski presents a nuanced exploration of mortality, nonconformity, and the search for meaning in human existence. Through a close reading of the poem, this essay has examined the intersections of these themes, drawing on philosophical and literary references to contextualise the speaker’s experiences. The poem’s rejection of conformity and embracing of individuality serve as a powerful critique of societal norms, inviting readers to reconsider the significance of authenticity in human existence.
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