Do you have a rejection story?

When I first started sending out poems, I had one accepted by Exquisite Corpse, but I didn't know it. I'd submitted poems to Exquisite Corpse and about twenty other magazines. After receiving eight or nine rejections in less than two weeks, I quit opening the SASEs. Instead as they arrived, I threw each, still sealed, into a Reebok shoebox.

Maybe six or eight months later, when I went back to open them, I found the acceptance. It was a handwritten 3x5 notecard from Codrescu. This happened in, oh, 1992, or so. I waited and waited, but they never published my poem. As I recall, the poem was called "This Is Your Leg." It was a surrealist clocks and saxophones as landscape and geography poem. This was before the Corpse went online. So to see if they'd printed my poem, I had to go to the university library and check it out.

They hadn't. So every three or four months or so, when I'd think of it, I'd run over to the library to check. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Finally, I sent a query letter in 1994, or so. I explained the situation and sent another copy of the poem they'd accepted. Laura Rosenthal wrote back and said something like, Why did you wait years to query? And thanks for sending another copy, but whatever we liked about this poem back in 1992 "no longer twitches."

After that, well, I figured what the hell, and started sending out poems as fast as I could. I mean, I figured, what else could happen?

What's your strangest rejection story? Put it in the comment box or track down my email and send it.

So far this year, I have one set of poems that's been rejected twice by the same magazine, but I only submitted once. Both rejections were in SASEs with my handwriting on it. The second must have been the SASE I included in query sent a couple months. They also took nearly a year to get around to rejecting me twice. Oh well, editing's a tough job. No?

By the way, have you read Codrescu's essay about riding along on Creeley's birthday drive?