ENG430 Week 6: Brevity

    Poetry In the Margins by Grace Bauer (Issue 69/ January 2022) was the first of the flash fiction narratives I explored on Brevity. The format of this narrative follows the narrator's thoughts and actions as they page through a second-hand poetry book to examine the notations made by the previous owner. The narrative is not linear, it pages back and forth in the book itself while flitting between the text and looking up the vocabulary within it. This story does a good job of establishing the “5-S’s” described in the Interlochen Center for the Art’s video. The setting of this story is rooted concretely in one text as is the situation—deciphering confusingly scrawled blue-ink notes throughout it. Sensory detail is vivid in this story, rooting the audience in the turning of the pages, the scribbled layers of notation, as well as the confusing idiosyncratic language used by the initial commentor. The shift or thwarted desire is represented in the author failing at their initial task—to decipher and ‘extend another kind of good will’ to the writing. This story ends cyclically, as the narrator discusses that they, too, will pass on the book adding even more decontextualized notations for the next reader to ponder.  

    I was struck by the format and flow of Three Oranges by Tami Mohamed Brown (Issue 44/ Fall 2013). The story introduces and maintains a strong sense of place, beginning with a portion of contextualizing detail placing the narrator at a bus stop on a busy street as night closes in and an unkempt imposing man approaches. There is repetitive mention of setting details, such as the waving of American flags at a car dealership across the street slotted within the dialogue that ensues between the narrator and a strange man. The sensory detail in this text is limited by its efficient use of dialogue, emphasized with lines like, “’ You’re not bothering,’ I tell him, but I can smell him from where I’m standing, a combination of onion, a musty clothes hamper,” (Brown). This story builds an atmosphere that makes the hairs on the back of my neck and down my arms stand on end, and begins with an ominous, foreboding tone. This energy shifts, however, when the stranger is met with friendly dialogue, ending in an almost euphoric exchange of the orange. The excitable energy toward the end of this story reminds me of the absurd connections formed in Natasha Lyonne’s series Russian Doll. The man poses a question of perception—how would he see himself from the outside? This story leaves the audience with the statement that we are all one step away from his position—and poses the inquiry of what it is that we are all one step from.  

    Anne P. Beatty presents a beautifully concise chunk of narrative in Roll Call (Issue 74/ Fall 2023). I accidentally clicked into this story and I was immediately satisfied to finish this string of 3 analyses with a short and sweet story. As I read this paragraph, I can not see how I could have picked a more relatable story for my current place in my career. This story follows a 10th-grade English teacher, tracking her relationship with one student from the first time their name is called on the roaster to years and years after when she sees that student in others, even while they have lived a long and very separate life elsewhere. It ends with the consideration that there are so many others who had English teachers who question if they think of them, answering this question with ‘we do’. Currently, I’m completing my fieldwork. Every day, I focus my energy on taking over two 10th-grade ELA classes, and barely two months in, I know I will be comparing future students to these students forever. For better or for worse. The experimental single paragraph of this work allows the shift to happen in the same breath as the introduction, sweeping, in the way a career sweeps time away.