News (Setting the Record Straight)

Recently I was interviewed by telephone for an article concerning the poetry workshop that I’ve attended for many years. During the interview I remember discussing how I joined the workshop, what a great person and poet the head of the workshop is, what great help she has been to all of us struggling poets there, and how talented many of the other poets in the workshop are, and what great things they have accomplished. On a more personal and less-accomplished note, I mentioned some of the journals that have accepted my poems as of late, and the fact that this was a new experience for me. In the past, rejections were the only norm I knew.

Somehow, either through some misstatement of mine or some misunderstanding by the journalist, I was quoted that I was being accepted more than rejected these days. (And none of my praise for the others was included!) Imagine my horror. Not only would such a statement be full of hubris, but a challenge to the universe. I am not now nor have ever been accepted for publication more than rejected.

Now, that said, I received replies from two journals yesterday. But even those results exhibit an unusually good ratio. 32 Poems rejected my five submissions. But Blue Unicorn accepted one poem of the five that I had submitted to them. Here, in front of the world, or at least the several readers that stop by here daily, I want to say that the ratio is usually much worse than that, and that I appreciate the minor miracle that one poem of ten has been accepted for publication. Thank you universe.