Rejections and an ingrate daughter

I took Laura to school with me last Wednesday so I could do my weekly rejection check—see how many of the poems I sent out at the end of last semester have come back. I finally realized that April and May is the time to send out poems; many journals don’t accept summer submissions, so if you squeak in an entry right before the end of the reading year, they usually read the poems more quickly so they can clear out their office for summer. Although maybe I should consider whether perhaps this makes the editors unsympathetic. I certainly have gotten a number of nos lately.

When I open my rejection letters, I generally allow myself a minute or two to whine about it—particularly if it’s one that I really had hopes for—and then I file it away and move on with life. I opened up this one, which had a really good set of poems included—and said something to the effect of why didn’t they like these poems? My far-too-smart-for-her-own-good daughter turns around and says to me, in this teenager voice, “Well, Mama, maybe it’s because you’re not Edgar Allan Poe.” I had a hard time deciding whether to laugh or stuff her in a trash can. Fortunately for her I decided to forgo the trash can, but it was a close call, let me tell you.