bespoke

I got rejected. That hasn’t happened in awhile. Years. The reason? I haven’t been sending work out. I have sent work out very occasionally. Very selectively. And have seen poems taken up.

Yesterday’s rejection from Global City Review was no big surprise. I didn’t think my aesthetic and theirs fit up well. But I had bought the latest issue and I was pushing myself to get work out somewhere, if not just anywhere. I was following the advice to send to a magazine you’ve studied. The poems I sent seemed somewhat Global-City-ish. Besides, it’s always seemed silly to me to hold back sending good stuff because the magazine hasn’t (to one’s own knowledge) published exactly that sort of thing before. Maybe it’s cuz they’ve not seen it? Does one only ever eat hot dogs because one has never tasted kielbasa? Or because one just doesn’t like anything else? You can’t know for sure. It’s not like I offered up an uncooked eggplant.

When sending work to a new place I wanted to send a poem written especially for them. I’ve done that three times now. The first time the magazine chose one of the poems in the packet but not the one I wrote to their announced theme. The one I wrote for Global City was versioned on LuvSet. It turned out the least Global-City-ish of the batch. Not that, in their case, they went for one else. The last of the three magazines has not yet responded.

I imagined my vow would result in more poems going out. It has, I suppose. But drip-drip turning into a trickle?