El Rejectionâ

Got a nice rejection from Shenandoah today, via a handwritten note from R.T. Smith.

I've sent to Shenandoah since the very beginning, and I've never gotten a handwritten note like this before from them until today, so that was welcoming. It seems like a very tough journal to crack.

Usually I like these notes not to necessarily hope to get into the journal next time, but to hope that someone else takes a poem or two, if not more, who also currently has them for consideration.

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Leaving for Pennsylvania tomorrow for a week or so.

Jess and I have to do some marriage license thing at the courthouse on Friday morning, and then we're meeting with the Father who's marrying us in the afternoon.

Then I'll be kicking it at the homestead, with family and friends, before the real insanity of summer starts.

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Yesterday was the official "Two Months Until We Get Married" mark...

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Recommendations:

Riceboy Sleeps - Riceboy Sleeps
Salem - Astronaut
White Rabbits - It's Frightening
Wilco - Wilco (The Album)
Isis - Wavering Radiant
Port-Royal - Magnitogorsk
Passion Pit - Manners
National Skyline - Bliss & Death
The Silent Years - Let Go

Thank You USPS

I just got a rejection in the mail from a journal who will remain nameless. Again, fine with me, their name goes on the list for the next batch that I have ready.

But what annoys me is that I was lucky to get the rejection at all. I say this because when I started sending out a few years ago, I failed to put something on the cover letter saying something like, "Please recycle any unused portion of the manuscript -- just notification is fine." AKA: Shred the pages and send me just the rejection slip if you don't like them.

This aforementioned journal, however, in their quickness to return a response (which I do appreciate greatly), forgot to read that at the bottom, or didn't care. Written on the fat SASE, since they clearly included the 5 pages of poems included in my original submission, was "Postage due .17" and I'm not sure I would've delivered that to my mailbox has I been the postal worker / delivery person. Who paid for that seventeen cents?

And the thing is, had they trashed it, I probably would've queried in three months, to an email back that said, "We sent a rejection two months back." Journals expect us as writers and submitters to take the time and follow their format and submission guidelines, but they can't read the necessary information we write to insure we at least get our rejection back. Not cool.

I don't know. The whole thing just annoys me. And a word to the wise -- even though it may not help, clearly -- if you're not writing something like that on your cover letter, you should. That's the reason why I did it: multiple envelopes returned with "owed postage," though the USPS was nice enough to deliver it, when they didn't have to in the first place.

Rejects

I got a nice rejection from Knockout the other day that got me thinking. Here's what they said:

"Again, we liked some of the poems here, but these weren't quite right for us. To be more specific, we felt they were too long for us; if you have any shorter work, we'd love to see it. If this is a strange request, apologies."

Now I'm fine with rejections, email or paper. They go into a pile or email folder, and their name goes on the list of where to send to next when I have things ready. That's probably what most people do I imagine.

But it was nice for Knockout (after having already received a few rejections) to let me know that they don't really dig the long poem. It wasn't personal to the point of mentioning even the titles, but I think if more journals were writing responses like this, they may cut down on submissions that they probably wouldn't publish.

Then I realized close to 1/3 of the poems in my manuscript are over a page, most nearing a full two pages, which probably would translate to nearly three pages depending on the size of a book. But thankfully every poem except one (which is still out in the world) has found a home. I write long poems. Maybe in X amount of years I won't, but now I am, and despite journal sizes or anything else, if I believe in the poems, and I like the journal, they'll be sent there.

Someone who I got my MFA with used to say, before I had even started thinking about sending work out, "I figure out how big the journal is size-wise, and then I cater my poems that way on the page when I send them out to each specific journal." That blew my mind. I thought it was crazy, and it was. And if you do that, I think you're crazy.

If your work's good enough, you should send it out. And if journals need to reject you because of the physical size and length of your work, that's all good, but like Knockout, I think that's a great piece of advice for writers to know, especially if they're writing long poems and they send to your journal, which, of course, doesn't like the like poem.

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I had a dream last night that a certain press was publishing my book, one I would be very happy with. And it was odd since I did actually send there; I would've thought a dream would produce a ridiculous exchange with Ecco or something.

But of course I'm not holding my breath for anything, as I expect the "Dear Poet" form letter announcing the semi-finalists and finalists. It was still an odd dream. Clearly I'm obsessing over this manuscript way too much.