Jordan over at Equanimity writes:

Isabel Nathaniel's "The Beholder: A Tale" is given its own heading in the TOC, "short story in verse." If I'd noticed that distinction before I started reading the piece, I might not have been so irritated with its first three sections, which are tedious short story scene-setting.

But tedious short story scene-setting is tedious even in short stories, no? Why should it be less irritating simply because the form is a short-story-in-verse rather than a poem? Or if you're still irritated by the piece, only less so than if it were a poem, where does the reduction in irritation lie?

UPDATE: Jordan responds, fairly.