May 15, 2009

Dear Ms. Hales, Mr. Skeen, and Mr. Turner:

I received your sticker in the mail today: “I was rejected by The Normal School.” It’s obnoxious and it’s rude. Please find it enclosed. You can keep it.

As a writer, it’s hard enough to face getting rejections without having them made into a joke. The least you can do is not be glib.

Perhaps some of you have forgotten what it’s like to send your work out and to hope and trust that it will be thoughtfully read and considered by the journals and magazines you send to. Perhaps publication has come easily for each of you, or perhaps you think other people should adopt a bullshit, disaffected posture where we all pretend we’re too cool to care if we get published or not.

What I write matters to me.

Anyone submitting to you should be treated with respect. I’m sure you’ll be cutting down on the number of submissions you receive with this juvenile approach. I’ll be saving my work and my postage for publications with more class.

Many happy returns,
KC Trommer

That’s a great rejection. I got a nice rejection from them too. A funny rejection, catering to the care-bears in our bodies, is better than a no-response-mail-day, any day.

I always sort of celebrate rejections: in a way, just the physical energy of that little note moving place back to us as our poems have moved geography to them– it’s kind of exciting, opening up that thin envelope and receiving that.

After all, acceptances mostly just come in the more-boring email now, don’t they? (The more exciting ones are by phone), but they’re just electronic bits of information, 0s and 1s while those rejection slips are palpable.

But we should definitely submit again– I think they’re really trying to do a dynamic thing, blurring genres in this litmag. The editors are all very good people.

Un abrazo from your facebook friend,
Sasha

I’ve added your blog to the World Class Poetry Toolbar, which makes one of 30 blogs now to be included. For one free download, toolbar users have access to 30+ blog subscriptions and other great treats, including, now, you.

Hi, I found your blog through Deb A’s site.

I think the sticker rejection is hilarious. Sound of like those ribbons they gave out at my favorite ice cream parlor when someone ate the full “Pig’s Trough” — “I made a pig of myself at Farrell’s.”

I would submit to them just for the sticker.

thanks for your post.
Kelli