When in law school (35 years ago) I was getting these really wonderful rejection letters from top law firms that recognized my lack of career drive long before I did. I took their condescending comfort dribble and did a pastiche extolling my virtues like a movie poster with selective quotes. Eventually I found work doing less harm in the world. But what can possibly be less harmful than writing poetry?
Is it not masochistic to list rejections? Untrained interns shuffle through the slush pile and their thumbs-down response has little meaning. All kinds of reasons can result in a no. You send in a beautiful poem about a bridge, not realizing that the magazine had already published four poems about bridges that year. Or the previous year they got careless and accepted enough work to fill the magazine for two years and decided not accept anything this year. And so forth.
Not masochistic at all. I believe in my own work far more than I believe in the gatekeepers. My objective in sharing the rejection history is to encourage others to march to their own drum.
When in law school (35 years ago) I was getting these really wonderful rejection letters from top law firms that recognized my lack of career drive long before I did. I took their condescending comfort dribble and did a pastiche extolling my virtues like a movie poster with selective quotes. Eventually I found work doing less harm in the world. But what can possibly be less harmful than writing poetry?
Is it not masochistic to list rejections? Untrained interns shuffle through the slush pile and their thumbs-down response has little meaning. All kinds of reasons can result in a no. You send in a beautiful poem about a bridge, not realizing that the magazine had already published four poems about bridges that year. Or the previous year they got careless and accepted enough work to fill the magazine for two years and decided not accept anything this year. And so forth.
Not masochistic at all. I believe in my own work far more than I believe in the gatekeepers. My objective in sharing the rejection history is to encourage others to march to their own drum.