Errors in the Script: Sewanee Writers Conference Series

by Greg Williamson

The poet's latest collection probes issues of knowledge, memory, nature, and the artist's life, among other important topics.

Genres: Poetry

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Kasandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Verbal wizardry" is right. These are obsessively well-crafted poems that combine high culture with pop culture, throw in a bunch of puns, often rhyme and use meter, and still surprise every time. Definitely funny, and astonishingly put together, like puzzles (in fact, some are puzzles, or at least riddles). His invention of a new form, Double Exposures, would have been more impressive if I'd felt they hung together, but in my opinion, only a few of them did (these are poems that work individually and together, resulting in 3 poems in one). The ones that worked were spectacular. The others, well, they weren't badly written, but maybe I'm just not as smart as Mr. Williamson. He's definitely smart. In the book, the voice of one poem proclaims itself "a geek", and I'd say these poems will appeal to the geeky set, as well as anyone who enjoys formal poetry with a bit more humor than most, and more invention than 99% of what's out there. Worth reading.

[Wyatt Gwyon]

The reader who cracks the spine of Greg Williamson's Errors in the Script, that rigorous, riotous marriage of traditional form and postmodern sensibility, may feel something akin to the moment. Do I throw up my hands, like the exasperated Jared White, and declare the book "completely lacking in content"? Or do I follow Richard through the poems' rabbit holes, reveling in how they prove "imaginative, smart, intriguing...varying in style and mood, approachable but challenging"?

Confession: At various points in my Williamson-induced mania, I have done both. Even now, having dog-eared and marginalia-ed my copy past any hope of regifting, I occasionally fantasize about introducing it to my paper shredder. No sooner does Williamson seem to proffer a clear thesis than he pirouettes away in a blur of charm and misdirection, leaving the would-be interpreter grasping at gnomic one-liners and surreal juxtapositions.

A saner critic might here invoke the New Critical nostrum about the heresy of paraphrase, retreat to a safe distance of aesthetic appreciation, and leave it at that. But as Kasandra intuits, these poems, "obsessively well-crafted" and "astonishingly put together" as they are, demand something more than the polite murmurs we reserve for untouchable art objects. They insist on being grappled with, unraveled, even manhandled a little. In an era of hardening dogmas and calcifying identities, Williamson's poems remind us that self-reflection need not be solipsism, that irony need not be cynicism, that humor can be a deadly serious affair.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

imaginative, smart, intriguing poetry varying in style and mood, approachable but challenging. looking forward to reading more.

[Tristan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was positively marvelous. I fell in love with Williamson's voice from the very beginning. The collection opens with "Origami": "The kids are good at this. Their nimble fingers/ Double and fold and double fold the pages" and the rest of the book continues in this manner. Every poem is at once amusing and serious, as in "The Top Priority", which begins "Granted I am a malcontent, a geek/Whose people skills and interfacing technique/Are, let's say, challenged." The play between existence and art and the necessary ambiguity that accompanies both way of understanding our world is explored consistently throughout the collection. This is especially true of the third section, where poems like, "The Life and Times of Wile E Coyote, Super Genius" illustrate the pain and joy that are part of the human experience and the interaction between truth and perception. This idea is also explored in "[from] In Search of The Forgotten Woman," a mock epic in the style of "The Rime of The Ancient Mariner" that tells of an afternoon in the mall. This poem also, through its direct play on the poetic form, speaks to "The Muse Addresses the Poet (and getteth alle up in hys face)", a scathing critique of the poetic tradition and of self-expression. This all leads to the title poem, a (mostly) clear and cohesive immersion into the mind of an artist struggling with life itself. As an example of this piece, here is section five:

I call up Gateway on the telephone.
"Your call's important. For brochure, press one.
If your computer isn't booting up,
Press two. For trouble with your modem..."on
And on, menus galore! For hours I try
The catacombs, which lead their phone-treed pawn
To trapdoors always back to start: "Your call's..."

This Byzantine perfection! Goldberg maze!
Closed loops uncrackable as Bucky Balls!
I wormholed back to Earth from Cyberspace:

There is no Operator standing by,
No fern-filled golden Help Room, no Web Master,

And no way out, till you, in a futile gesture,
Returning to the cradle, hang it up.

All of these make for a highly enjoyable read, but the triumph of the book is in Williamson's use of form and structure. Most of the poems are metrically regular, with strong, unforced rhyme schemes that display a truly consummate command of the language. This poetic regularity allows the pieces' irony to be even clearer as he discusses the fundamental illogic and messiness of life in a rigid and formal structure, but colloquial and simple style. Even better than his use of rhyme and meter is the structural brilliance of the second section "Double Exposures". Each one of these poems, like a double-exposed photograph, is two distinct and often unrelated images that, when combined, create something new and entirely different. I do not know whether it is better to read the parts and then the whole, or the other way round, I did some parts each way and both worked well for me.

A fantastically poised and intelligent work that reaches the core of art in an accessible and interesting way.

[Jared White · Rating 2 out of 5]

Greg Williamson is incredible wit his mastery of poetic forms. But this book felt completely lacking in content. He isn't saying a darn thing in his poems.