Well, this particular effort has come to a close – the remaining three poems that Saw Palm was holding onto were finally rejected. Even worse, I appear to have deeply offended an editorial assistant with this posting you are now reading, such that she wrote on Facebook (sarcastically, of course), in response to my blog that “[I/she] must be a real bitch.” (Apparently, this person did a search on their name and came up with my blog – but who among us hasn’t googled ourselves these days? I freely admit to doing it, myself).

Fortunately, there was at least one friend ready to defend the poor, beleaguered editorial assistant, commenting: Based on the rest of the blog, I’m guessing it just wasn’t that good. I doubt it has anything to do with the medium in which it was submitted. Just a guess though. Maybe their poetry editor is an ego-maniacal monster out to crush other poets beneath her feet.

The editorial assistant laughed it off and responded: absolutely. i want to crush other poets. especially guys who write about menstrual blood.

(And yes – one of my poems did reference having sex with a woman during her period. Not graphically, to be sure – I won’t say it was done tastefully, because surely that’s in the eye of the beholder, and also, clearly she did not find it so.)

I do feel bad that I touched a nerve. So let me say that my point was not that you, personally are a “bitch” – nor that publications (nor their editorial assistants) that rely on electronic transmission are inherently flawed. It was intended to be more of a question of how the medium affects the message (without going all Marshall McLuhan on everyone). Without getting into the post-structuralist weeds, I think we can all agree that writing done for instantaneous, electronic formats (instant messaging, email, blogs, etc) tends to be shorter. The burden of proof for a point made tends to be less than in traditional, print formats (is this posting itself an example of that? poorly argued and using the medium’s lower standards of evidence to coast by?).

Also, I am old enough to remember when we still wrote letters to people. Now, letter writing has become a self-conscious anachronism. Be honest – who out there really writes many letters anymore? Even thank you letters are more often done via a phone call now or even an email or text.

As a final note, the editor did email that I shouldn’t  “let the rejections keep [me] from continuing to write and study the craft.” She even wrote this before calling me out on Facebook, for what it’s worth.

But I can still remember when rejections (and even acceptances) came in the mail. Sometimes with fairly personalized letters, but more often with a form letter, but with note (often hand written in the margins) explaining what they did and did not like about the work, in what direction they would recommend taking the work. In some cases, even what they would require to get them to reconsider it in a revised form.

But maybe my poems did not deserve such treatment. As the editor assistant’s friend suggested, maybe “it just wasn’t that good.” If that’s the case, so be it. I was talking to a friend a mine who teaches at a local university and spoke in favor of the traditional gatekeepers whose job it used to be to tell us what is good and worthwhile and what is not. I did not speak in an unqualified fashion, but the decline of these traditional gatekeepers makes it more difficult to sort through the vast quantity of chaff produced out there in the ether (including my work? how sad to think that!) and show us what the true wheat looks like.

Somewhat ironically, this self same editorial assistant wrote in her personal blog about the struggle of trying decipher short and occasionally cryptic remarks that make up 90% of modern day rejection letters (not that acceptance letters tend to be more enlightening – the one time I got a very detailed letter back, it turned out to be paperwork I was expected to sign, affirming that I would not put these poems online in any way between now and their official publication). It would appear that she came across my little post not long after receiving some bad news from some literary magazine and, unsurprisingly, in no mood to be trifled with.

On the plus side, after all this, my little blog, which generally gets ignored (I haven’t even promoted it to family and friends) got a nice little spike in visits after the little Facebook/blog flame war sparked for a few hours.

Perhaps I should just close by saying, I wish us both luck and recommend that neither of us take rejections too seriously.