my poetics of the short story form

I'll confess to one and all that ambition of epic proportions took hold of little old me, and 13 Tales slowly began to morph into iambic pentameter--until an ounce of horse sense intervened and stopped me. The tale is a bardic tale as it is and needs little further meddling. As it is, the 13 Tales can be all too easily confused with a type of serial novel, and that's fine. I don't care. I know I wrote the thing as 13 separate short stories arranged chronologically, and in the style of short stories which are themselves poetic forms born of poetic inspiration, something that novelists, who tend to compose piecemeal, can't do.

I think in terms of 5000 words and compose in this crystalline shape [in truth the length varies from 3500 to 7000 words--especially after revision]:

*
**
***
**
*

that is, 5 parts and 9 sequences. Lately, the challenge has been to adopt the flowing cadences of Whitman; and, truthfully, it would be a lie not to admit Angela Carter's influence.

The novel is out for me. Such a burdensome read, so much attention to micro-cosmic detail and over-wrought descriptions, neurotic confession and mind-numbing dialogue going on page after page. I don't mind it all that much but read novels sparingly. I always took it personally and bitterly to hear that short stories were 'little novels.' They are a different animal as conceptually opposed to novel form on the one hand as they are to the play on the other. Nor are they a minor form. In the novel it is description and character development defining the form. In the play it is dialogue that does the job.

But the short story is about action, the moral imperative to act upon a decision that guides people to their necessary consequences. In my story, THE RUDDY ROSE, Nephi's weakness for erotic fantasy renders him impotent and so his more virile rival wins the reality while Nephi is left to ponder his loss. A decision taken cancels all other possibilities. See how it all plays out. This is not moralizing. These are not sermonettes I write, but actions have consequences. That is the soul of story telling.

In each story of the 13 Tales Nephi suffers the consequences of his decisions. They are therefore not chapters of a novel but a cycle of tales.