Canadian author Jane Urquhart is today the acclaimed writer of a series of novels. She started her writing career as a poet. The leap from the shortest form of literary expression to the longest was not immediately. Before committing to the always underestimated task of writing novel after novel after novel, she first took the hesitant little step of publishing a book of short stories titled Storm Glass. One almost need not have known this information beforehand to see that these stories are the work of a crafter of verse.
A cursory reading of analysis or even simple reviews of the short stories of Urquhart will have you convinced that what unifies her writing as a whole and the stories in the collection as a precise specimen, is her relation to nature and geography. She is often considered something akin to a regional writer if one expands region to include the big chunk of territory known as the Great White North. She is a writer who sets her tales in Canada, but they speak to readers around the world. What really unifies these stories is their construction. They are almost the equivalent of what might happen if a talented prose writer was given a poem with the assignment of turning them into short works of prose.
Clues as to what awaits the reader are provided in the author’s prefatory introduction explaining how she went from poet to short story writer. “Italian Postcards” is singled out as an example of a story idea constructed around the repetition and recurrence of a single image of a body preserved inside a glass case. That is exactly the kind of image around which poems are constructed a thousand times a day. For the typical prose writer who has not pursued poetry, rare is the idea that formulates with such singular specificity. Urquhart thinks like a poet when writing her short stories.
This becomes apparently literally in the opening lines of the book which commences with a story titled “The Death of Robert Browning.” Here is a little free tip that some might useful: writers commit to prose don’t, generally speaking, write about poets, much less poets who are slightly less famous than their spouse. And if they do write about the death of the second most famous poet in a marriage, you can bet it is going to have some action—maybe even a mystery—rather than contemplative meditation of the poet’s final thoughts before succumbing to mortality. The entire first paragraph is constructed of imagery which could be reframed and restructured into a poem.
The shadow of a former tenant in “John’s Cottage” inspires allusions to Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. “Forbidden Dances” moves seamlessly back and forth in time, creating its own linear line of logic between the past and the present. Built upon ideas, image and themes rather than plot, the effect is dreamlike and ambiguous. So it should not be surprising that the real masterwork here is a very short story titled “Dreams.” It is a dazzling display of the brilliance that a poet can bring to the short story form by virtue of making something positive out of what is often viewed as the primary limitations of verse: length. Although trite, it is nevertheless true: the story gains all its mighty power from what is left out just as much as it does from what was kept in. “Dreams” remains the shining accomplishment of Urquhart’s career as a short story artist, so perfect is it that one cannot even imagine the point of trying to top it.
