Feb 7

Feb 7 Book Review : Brian Alan Ellis - The Errors Tour: Collected Poems (2025)

I hate a love and hate relationship with greatest hits records. They're an insult to anyone who cares about an artist deeply, but they're great if you don't give a fuck. When I listen to Elvis Presley, I don’t want the deep cuts. Brian Alan Ellis' The Errors Tour: Collected Poems is more like a super deluxe boxed set of books I've already reviewed than a straight greatest hits. But I've read them again and it felt great to do so. Some art just grows with you and allows you do appreciate how you've changed upon a second look.

The Errors Tour: Collected Poems is not a celebration like a greatest hits record would be. It really is a smarter and more mature look Brian Alan Ellis shares on his writing with the reader.

I know it sounds weird, but The Errors Tour: Collected Poems is basically the collections Road Warrior Hawk and Bad Poet rolled up in one along with extra stuff (that we'll talk about later). Everything in this new omnibus is chosen and placed strategically: the title, the introduction, other people's look at Ellis' art (including mine) and both collections, which are presented here as some sort of an evolution or a devolution, depending on who you might ask. I’m convinced this book makes more sense if you read it already.

The Self As A Commodity

One trait that distinguishes Brian Alan Ellis from any other author on Earth is usage of the nostalgic, Tweet-sized autofiction as a tool to foster bonds. He's not an elevated, visionary soul. He's the interesting co-worker, the magnetic stanger at the bar you'll never seen again. His poems are not quite fiction, they're rough experiences and emotional trauma repackaged as an entertainment product. Ellis' endless source of inspiration (and content) is himself and in The Errors Tour, we look back on it.

In his introduction, Ellis shares that these chosen cuts are from a difficult era of his life where he lost his mother (whom he has an embattled relationship with), faced the isolation of the pandemic and much more. It sheds a whole new light on what we thought was a suffering-as-performance schtick and frames that performance as a coping mechanism where an emotionally dispossessed young man seeks solace in an easier and more colourful time in his life. In other words, it's fucking relatable.

I've been reviewing Brian Alan Ellis for almost a decade now and our relationship never went beyond the professional email or DM exchange, but I feel oddly close to the guy. Even more so after reviewing eight books of his where he dabbled with fiction, but always veered back to bite-size repackaged bits and pieces of reality and memory intertwined. His intimacy and his vulnerability are entirely his own, but his memory has been colonized by dopamine pushers like all of us children of the nineties.

**The Part Of The Errors Tour That I Wrote**

I was the first surprised to find my review of Road Warrior Hawk reprinted in The Errors Tour: Collected Poems. I was not made aware of this prior, but Brian Alan Ellis didn’t need to. I’d probably let him crash my house unnanounced when I'm not there for as long as he fed my dog. Also, I didn’t mind his use of my writing because I understood why he used it. It's an instance of his worse being seen and thought of. Of his words creating other words, inserting his work into a cultural discourse.

It felt good. I’m probably the only person in the world who will ever feel good about that (except perhaps my mom and Josie), but many authors have come to me over the years and told me I was the only attention they ever got. It is the first time my work has become integrated into someone else's and I take it as a compliment. May he make enough money with The Errors Tour: Collected Poems to order himself whatever the fuck he wants from Taco Bell or invest it all into future House of Vlad titles.

I don’t know if The Errors Tour: Collected Poems is the place to start with Brian Alan Ellis. It's probably as good as any, but I believe it gets even better if you read Road Warrior Hawk and Bad Poet before. I don’t know how it’s going to age, but I have developed a fierce parasocial relationship with this guy and I suspect that I’m not alone. How do you even rank a book like this that you technically read before? I have no idea, but I'll keep it below eight even if emotionally, it speaks to me a lot louder than most stuff.