Recently, a new member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets wrote to ask me how I cope with rejections.
I was reminded of some advice I was given years ago, that one should expect about 10 rejections for each acceptance. If you receive more than that on average, then you are either submitting your work to the wrong editors, or not revising your poems sufficiently before submitting them. All poets, even the best of them, experience rejections, and many more rejections than acceptances. But it does take a while to come to accept it.
And it helps sometimes to look upon rejections with a sense of humor. Which brings me to the poet featured in this installment of my blog: Francesca Bell.
Francesca Bell was born in Spokane, Washington into a family with deep, hardscrabble roots in the Northwest. Her maternal great-grandfather, the son of a prostitute and her client, was raised in a brothel. He raised his own six children, including Bell’s grandmother, on a 160-acre homestead in Plummer, Idaho. On her father’s side, the Norwegian Wikum family, when traced 700 years back, was already renowned for its spectacularly heavy drinking. The hard living continued in America where the clan was referred to around Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho as “the fighting Wikums.”
Bell was raised in Washington and Idaho and settled as an adult in California. She did not complete middle school, high school, or college and holds no degrees. She has worked as a massage therapist, a cleaning lady, a daycare worker, a nanny, a barista, and a server in the kitchen of a retirement home.
Francesca has written one of my favorite poems on the subject of rejection, turning it around and rejecting the editor who rejected her poem. You might want to try this yourself when you receive a form letter rejection that you know was sent to dozens of other poets. It will help you to not take it so personally. It happens to all of us.
I’m going to follow Francesca’s poem with my own effort on the subject of rejection. Enjoy.
I Long To Hold The Poetry Editor’s Penis In My Hand
and tell him personally,
I’m sorry, but I’m going
to have to pass on this.
Though your piece
held my attention through
the first few screenings,
I don’t feel it is a good fit
for me at this time.
Please know it received
my careful consideration.
I thank you for allowing
me to have a look,
and I wish you
the very best of luck
placing it elsewhere.
Francesca Bell. Rattle #40, Summer 2013
And here’s mine:
Rejection
This is just to say
that I have eaten your submission
which you were hoping to see
in the next issue of our journal.
It was rather bland
and lacked the spice our readers
have come to expect of us.
So much depends on an editor
sitting in his wheeled-chair
at his white desk
his red pen tucked behind his ear
eating his chicken sandwich.
So much depends on choosing
the right publication for your poetry
and ours is not the one for you.
You can find out more about Francesca Bell and read more of her poetry here:
https://www.francescabellpoet.com/