In the Face of Rejection

A few days each week, Zach watches Ramona for a chunk of hours so I can bike off to the library or Panera or Starbucks to have some solid writing and reading time. I spend much of this time reading poetry, writing and revising poetry, and occasionally blogging.

And one quick, stabbing duty I perform every single time I do work: check in on Submittable. Quite a few journals use Submittable to manage writers' submissions to their publication. My goal is to submit my poetry at least once every three weeks, so my Submittable account is filled with many of my attempts at publishing. I keep an Excel spreadsheet of all my publishing attempts (Submittable, paper submission, direct email, etc.), but there's something special about signing in to Submittable and scrolling through all those stark red "Declined" statuses. Here's a screenshot for you:



Lovely, no? In the last twelve months, I've written somewhere around 50 poems, I've sent groupings of these poems to 14 journals, and I've had a total of four poems accepted for publication.

My first thought here is that I should be submitting to more places. I'm also tempted to consider my poetry's worth on the scale of how many "Accepted" submissions I have versus how many "Declined." But I know such thinking is foolish. Even well-known poets have to send their work out relentlessly, over and over and over, if they hope to see it published. And so I loop back around to the thought, Send out more! Send them out more frequently! Hop to it, woman!

Honestly, I don't usually mind the rejection (though it does irk me that Wisconsin Review never updated the status of my submission from "In-Progress" to "Accepted"). What feels more important to me is the work, and I believe the work itself has value to myself, my poetry group, my family and friends, even if it's never seen by strangers or accepted by publishers.

I have this wish that every neighborhood would have a resident poet, someone who includes a poem in a neighborhood newsletter and holds readings and poetry gatherings. Because in me, there is a need for poetry, for the way it can capture a moment or a mood, the way it can express despair and beauty, the way it carefully arranges language so that in very few words, a reader can find a deep affinity with the poet. Poetry can bring us together, and it can bring us into awareness of the lives of people unlike us. And I think the writing of poetry can be powerful in the life of the poet, too, even if their work is not critically successful.

Labels: , , , ,