You’ve Got Mail

Throughout literary history, the rejection letter has received more than its fifteen minutes of fame. In fact, a book by Andre Bernard, Rotten Rejections: The Letters that Publishers Wish They’d Never Sent (Robson Books, 2002) recounts several now embarrassing letters written to authors of what became famous books. Here’s a sampling: on Silvia Plath, “There certainly isn’t enough talent for us to take notice”; on The Diary of Anne Frank, “The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift the book above the ‘curiosity’ level”; and even on Stephen King’s Carrie, “We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell” (http://www.writersservices.com/mag/m_rejection.htm).

As an aspiring writer, I was often told of authors who kept a file—some several files—of their rejection letters. Once they became popular, these files became the great moral to the writing story which naturally goes like this: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Everyone, it seems, can be the little writer that could.

Now, as the recipient of several of them myself, I would argue that rejection letters are largely overrated. Not because they take the wind out of one’s creative sails, or because filthy lucre blinds publishers to the genius of one’s work, or because the letters themselves are often written in cold, not even calculated language. No, rejection letters are overrated simply because they pale in comparison to the real king of the publishing process: anticipation.

At least, that is, in publishing poetry. The publishing process is greatly simplified in the publishing of poetry. To send out individual poems, you don’t need to write a “query letter” asking permission to send your work, and you definitely don’t need some agent ferrying your work back and forth across whatever River Styx it must cross. All you need to publish poetry is an address, a few sheets of paper, and two envelopes. You take one envelope and put in the following: a cover letter telling about yourself and your poetry; the poems you want to include, typically 3-5; and an SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope) in which the editor will return his or her verdict. You put these in the mail and wait. The longer the better. This is where anticipation comes in.

Snail mail may be old school. It may often contain junk. It may even be unstewardly. But it’s awesome nonetheless. My children love to get the mail. They take turns getting it, opening the mailbox in anticipation, mainly because their grandmother sends cards at the faintest whiff of a holiday.

The mailbox is the present we get to open every day. When you send out poems, every day you go to the mailbox is a day of possibility, and every day that you don’t get a response means the possibility is still out there. Where is your poem? Is it being opened at this moment? Is someone bringing it to the attention of another for input? Is it jarring a memory, a thought, a conversation? Actually, I’d never thought of these possibilities until just now. Personally, when I send out poems, I let them out of my imaginative reach and just enjoy the wait.

Last spring, I required that my poetry students send off poems to publishers at least two separate times: once to the Lyrical Iowa competition and once to another publication of their choice. Several balked at the requirement for various reasons. Then, to the surprise of at least eight of those budding poets, they got accepted and will be published this October in Lyrical Iowa.

One particular poet from the class, after she found out that her poem got accepted, confessed to feeling a bit ornery at being forced to send a poem off in the first place. “I thought ‘What’s the point?’” she later told me. In this case, of course, the publishing made a bit of a difference.

Still, the point in my mind was not publication—it was anticipation. Writing is communication. We write things so that there is some account of our lives, to show that we were here. What we write is ultimately completed by a reader on the other end. And so, to complete the process, we must put our writing before others.

Next time, for those who balk at marketing their work, I will offer another alternative: they may send out their poems to at least 15 family members or friends, thereby gifting their poetry. Yes, I’ll allow them to use email to do it. But how much better would it be for 15 people to open the present of their mailbox to find a gift of words?

One could live on that sort of anticipation for days.