On Error by David Greenspan

by Tyler Truman Julian

David Greenspan’s chapbook, Error, is especially significant in our current moment of artificial intelligence and large language models. At times reminiscent of the cubist writings of Gertrude Stein, the poetry of Error seems more akin to the language remixes of EDM or rap, rife with repetition, creative wordplay, and jarring breakdowns of language. Error is a collection of untitled poems, separated by page breaks, that ultimately connect as one cohesive poem. This structure, coupled with the poems’ play with language, allows Greenspan to define and redefine what it means to be human and to grow up haunted by a troubling past. The strangeness of these poems could hardly be duplicated by a LLM and showcases the role of experimentation to maintain writing’s importance in our changing times, especially as it seeks to define human experience, emotion, and creativity.

Error utilizes a fragmented, error strewn syntax to explore how one utilizes words to make meaning, especially in relation to painful memory. How does one define himself in the face of pain and the bounds of language? Early in the chapbook, Greenspan writes,

I aspire to personhood, to
incisor chipped,
irritant. Glitch improvised while perform
morning. I provisional,
sham at breakfast. Before
sun, fog taken at face
value, frog in mouth, raise
temperature. Pace
spoon against upper
palette. Frog squeak, I
rebrand something closure to
nervous system.

Meaning making, for Greenspan, occurs in the glitches, the remaking of closer into closure found in the penultimate line above. By breaking down language to its misuse, its circumlocution, Greenspan is able to engage with memory safely, without jeopardizing falling back into those moments that were/are painful. Later, he attempts clearer definition:

Man is time. Adult is
Rat. I am [ ].

Syllogism is the act of developing one clear conclusion from two suppositions. If “man is time” and “adult is rat,” then what is Greenspan? Developing these poems is a personal quest toward answering that question. When adult figures in a person’s life have acted as “rats,” what will that person be in adulthood? Defining this is the challenge, yet Greenspan’s language play allows him to explore potentialities:

Bright with syllogism. I all am. How it is when you’re young and ready to scatter.
Months passed. I was in Michigan then or by then. The money rolled. Mother let me buy
the toy. Shell in pocket, pick up pebble, place inside. I put a worm in once.

Across this short collection, Greenspan constantly reshapes identity, striving toward integration—a recognition of the many contradictions of human existence. There is bad and there is good, a rat and a toy, and we are made up of all these things. “I all am,” Greenspan tells us. The challenging and complicated malapropisms of Error allow for all defining identity markers to exist at once and create a means for processing the past for Greenspan, something he challenges the reader to bear witness to.

To err is human, and David Greenspan seeks to define his humanity through error. His intentional erring cultivates vulnerability and humanity across the poems of Error. As a result, this chapbook is not for the casual reader, but one interested in the way a poet can play with words and force a reader to think critically and participate in the larger project at hand. Greenspan’s challenge seems all the more necessary in our present moment. The experimentation of Error reveals deeper humanity than what may first be assumed when looking at its word-level breakdown of language. These poems—these errors—can be consumed quickly in one sitting, like an album of new songs from your favorite artist, or absorbed slowly and repeatedly, like those songs we return to, gathering new meaning from each refrain and rhyme. Regardless of how one chooses to engage with this chapbook, one will nevertheless come to appreciate humanity’s continual remixing with each page turn of Error.

In case you missed it—check out Greenspan’s poems, “Portrait of the ocean as a young artist” and
“Language for the needy thing in your lungs,” in Issue Six of The Shore