In the beginning...

In the beginning there was a writer who published A SAILOR'S STORIES. Then he wanted to publish A SAILOR'S SHORT, SHORT STORIES composed of short, short stories he had already written but he decided he couldn't because all the short, short stories that he included in his first book were considered by the readers to be poetry, whereas he had intended them as condensed versions of short stories and he didn't know anything about poetry.Since he couldn't call the second book A SAILOR'S SHORT, SHORT STORIES if it turned out they were in fact poetry, he took another direction and decided to write a new book on his musings about religion and creation that he had written in his first book, A SAILOR'S STORIES, as PENUMBRA I and PENUMBRA II. PENUMBRA I being the story of creation and PENUMBRA II being the origin of mankind. To make two long stories short, he had written them as short, short stories and readers referred to them as poetry,
You may think this is a long and convoluted story but if I tried to tell it as a short, short story, you might think it was poetry and I'd be back where I started.