Dealing with Rejection

Rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!

The sea appears endlessly deep. The stars feel like they’re infinitely far away. In this sense, so does a poetry acceptance, sometimes. A huge dry spell can appear in your life. You go through Submittable, send the best work you have, and nothing but form rejections as far as the sky you can see. You fiddle around, change styles, try to mimic others. Still, rejection city. I’m not here to say that you should reject rejection, that you should have a British stiff upper lip. As a poetry colleague of mine says, you can learn from rejection. You can go back to the rejected poems and reevaluate your choices. Do things need to be cut? Is an ending weak? Labor as much as you can to make the rejected poems better, then try again. I would also add that you have to write what’s important to you, in your voice, authentically. If that’s being rejected, it may be you’re choosing the wrong markets. Do more research—there seems to be a place for everyone, eventually. And sometimes you have to just wait, like an angler with their fishing pole. The bait may be right for only one kind of fish. But when it’s reeled in and brought to shore, the fish is beautiful with pinks, reds, greens, yellows. “Rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!” (as Elizabeth Bishop might say).