Blogging or Submitting

You have chosen, if you're reading this. Day before yesterday I sent out a new packet of poems to four different magazines. Poems were all finished, no tweaking needed. All I had to do was select the four poems for a suite, select Rattapallax, Threepenny Review, Atlanta Review and Many Mountains Moving. I had to print cover letters, stuff the batches into envelopes, stamp them and walk them to the mailbox. Time spent: 2-1/4 hours.

Most working poets report an average about 17 subs per acceptance, and I'm right in there at that average. I'd like to improve my average, naturally, so I spend more and more time filing and re-reading my increasingly complicated rejection letters. There are flat-out forms. Or the cheery and inviting forms that beg you to consider this rejection as an anomaly, and please send more work for us to reject. Then the scrawled notes on forms: "We liked 'My Architect' the best of these. Then comes the truly personal note: "Good to see more of your work. I really enjoyed these poems" -- and yet they sent them back! These often are accompanies with subscription forms.

I read in a blog that Marianne Moore wouldn't give up on a poem until it had been rejected 40 times. Who would reject Marianne Moore 40 times? It's an apocryphal story, but has an embedded truth. What could I be doing besides submitting poetry or stories for publication? (Besides writing - I know that!) Blogging, of course. Time expended just now to read three blogs and write this: 25 minutes. And I haven't even finished my first cup of coffee.

I'm now working on an essay entitled, "How the Internet Is Ruining Your Poetry." Stay tuned.