The Fate of My Poems

Today I received a reply from the New Yorker about my poems, which, though it wasn't an acceptance, was nice because I hadn't expected to hear back from them at all. My first rejection! I'll just go and sob quietly in a corner . . .

Here is the quatrain-like text:

We regret that we are unable
to use the enclosed material.
Thank you for giving us the
opportunity to consider it.

The Editors

I'm not surprised, and I'm not wounded because I know my poems are good – perhaps not extremely good, but good enough that I am not at all ashamed to read them now. Besides, though the poems that are published in the New Yorker are usually admirable, I suspect that I would choose to publish different submissions. It is a matter of taste, if one has so many contributions and the wide majority are (presumably) excellent.

What would have been nice, though, is to know if they think, based on those poems, that I might come up with a poem that they would like to publish. Or if I seriously need to work on my writing, or if my style would simply fit better into another publication. But I never expected any detailed response, as I don't think that the editors have the time to provide one.

In any case, this isn't very noble, but I will always be amused to know that my verse was rejected, whereas they did accept a poem in which the writer opines that grief is like a purple monkey.