The first article in my new series for Read Write Poem is now available, tackling the painful and often taboo topic of rejection letters head-on. It’s not something poets tend to admit to receiving, let alone talk about with their peers.
Yet rejection is a natural and necessary (albeit sometimes painful) part of the writing business. Asking what you can get out of the experience is just plain smart. So, in that spirit, I have done my best to serve up fairly simple, practical advice with a dash of humor and a healthy side of encouragement.
It tends to go like this: we are having an interesting conversation, bantering a bit, and then one of us says something clever, or strange, and oftentimes a little surreal. Out comes the phrase, directed at me with all the sincere enthusiasm of a revelation. Of the friends, colleagues, and relatives who know that I write poems, it is uncanny how many have, at one time or another, exclaimed to me, “You should write a poem about that!”
Normally, as the weeks roll by, I get up early to write, read in the evenings after work, and collect the occasional acceptance or rejection slip from the mailbox. By contrast, this week felt like the equivalent of some kind of poetry hyperdrive, including:
