I actually hardly have much of an update, since I've pretty much only gotten one more rejection since the last mention (and 100 seems incredibly unlikely even with a steady stream of new work going out.) As such, we stand at 4 acceptances / 7 rejections and about 10 more blowing in the wind. However, it's a good effort, since those 4 acceptances are probably more than I've had in any recent similar span of time (I started the project early February).
Before my MFA studies in the early aughts, I had just discovered the world of online journals and was constantly sending work out as quickly as it came back. During my studies, it was similar, since I was producing quite a lot and engaging more with the po-biz world in general. After that, both my writing production, my free time, and my reluctance to play the submission game led to very few publications that weren't solicited for a good many years. I would feel panicked and occasionally send out a round, and occasionally got good results, but in no way did I pursue it as doggedly as I had a decade earlier.
And of course, very rarely do we actually place work when we're not sending it out. I'm always super-excited when someone solicits me, though I had a spate where I kept getting solicited and then rejected. I chalk it up to changes in my writing, which not incredibly drastic (and I would argue for the better) made things less appealing to editors who had read older poems. Sort of like if you read the fever almanac and liked it and asked for work, and then got something new and nothing at all like what you expected. the fever almanac, of course, was written between 2001 and 2004, and I don't really write poems the same now. Even my work from other, more recent books feels like there is a distance.
I'm still finding it maddening that editors don't seem to be liking some of the newer series as much as I do, particularly the swallow poems, which feel like the strongest thing I've written in recent memory. Most of the work going out now is them, along with straggly bits of exquisite damage, the summer house, {licorice, laudanum}, and the artist statement series. I'm way to unorganized to do simultaneous submissions, so if things come back a couple times, I usually retire them, since by then I am usually ready to release the zine/artist book version of things anyway. It's still good to place a couple pieces from every project to generate interest though, and so far, none of the swallow submissions have gotten even so much as a nibble.
So I soldier on. The poems come in, the poems go out with the tide. I will soon have some more artist statement pieces ready to go out (my daily writing has been wrapped up in zodiac pieces, but I'll be going back to the former soon).
