The Faithful

We’ve previously published your compressed fiction. How is the compressed poem both like and unlike the compressed prose piece?

Similarities:

My process for developing “The Faithful” and “Myopia” was the same. Shards of memory inspired both. From those fragments, I built each piece inductively, by adding words, concepts, and images, one by one in multiple drafts, each draft a bit longer than the previous one. I wrote both pieces in a sparse, straightforward style, without physical descriptions of characters, or obscure metaphors. Both cover a period of time longer than an instant, and my goal for both was identical: to communicate quickly, to capture readers, immediately.

Differences:

“The Faithful” represents my adolescent years in Boston. My friends and I participated in everything described in the poem, except removing trash barrels from parking spots—nobody would have dared to do that. Because it’s a poem, I changed, deleted, and moved words around to balance cadence and the visual and auditory length of lines. To maintain compression, I adopted a modified list format to punch out activities and recreate a time and place.

In “Myopia,” I relied upon personal items or experience for background knowledge—my collection of quilt books; an exhibit of Amish Quilts with rigid geometric designs, bold color combinations, and exquisite workmanship; lectures at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston—but the entire story is fictional. Because it’s prose, I fleshed it out with a storyline, some characterization, and dialogue. To maintain compression in this piece, I set up a sharp contrast between the two sections, by creating one focused scene in each section.