This morning I woke up thinking about a dream I had last week, in which my waking thought was something akin to how poetry was tremendously demoralizing. Or maybe, more correctly, BEING a poet was demoralizing (the dream was long and confusing and involved a competition in which I, from the audience, totally knew the winners in advance. Yet I also knew I would never be among them and had just resigned myself to it.) I probably jinxed myself, because, today, I woke up to two journal rejections, one in submittable and one in e-mail, but neither was particularly welcome first thing of the day. And yet, all of writing is about rejection, and decades into whatever this career is, I know it's a massive part of it. I also know that poems fail to land for any number of reasons with editors, including they were just bored with you or hated your name or how you phrased your cover letter. That they'd ready 33 poems about ex-lovers or dead parents and yours was the 34th.
And I know things from the other side of the gate as an editor myself, but that doesn't stop me from immediately doubting myself or my work or asking why I even bother. That I will never have that thing that makes one really successful. That I'm not clever enough, well-connected enough. That I didn't have the right childhood, go to the right school. That I'm not sparkly enough. That, worse, I'm not good enough. Or even worse than that, think that I'm good at poeming but really suck. That everything I have achieved over the years has been some random fluke. Or some feat of trickery. That I slipped in under the wire. That I wandered into the wrong classroom, but they let me stay only if I stayed quiet and didn't demand too much attention.
Perhaps it's just time and experience. I was once an avid submitter, flinging poems out into the universe and not caring when they came back. Volume definitely seemed the way to go. A numbers game, like spinning a roulette wheel or pulling the lever on a slot machine that doled out the occasional acceptance. Now I am definitely more selective, more careful, and usually never do simultaneous submissions since I have a hard time keeping track of them. And yet, it doesn't seem to have gotten easier, but somehow it seems harder. I look at older work and actually can't figure out why certain journals published certain older poems because I can see their holes and failings, and yet, those same journals are quick to reject new work when I send it, better work, stronger work. It makes me doubt my own assessment of what is even good.
It puts me in a disgruntled mood, but then perhaps the thing that comes with time and experience is to talk yourself off the ledge. To believe in what you're doing even if at times it feels like maybe no one else does. The nice thing is, I have to remind myself that while I love the collaboration of journals and publications, which serve as promo and community, they are absolutely not always necessary to get your work out there in these days of social media obviously. But that doesn't change how you feel when someone, inevitably, says no.
