For the first time in years I look forward to the mail dropping down the chute. There are more than bills, coupons and credit card solicitations coming in the mail these days. In the last three or four months I’ve been submitting my poems to journals—actually getting them out there into the world and seeing if they stick anywhere. I’ve taken the whole submission process on with vigor; setting up computer files containing documents on the submission guidelines of nearly 150 literary journals (gleaned from their web sites), two or three “cover letter” templates, folders with a copy of each poem submitted (hard copy and on computer), and the same for each journal submitted to, organized by date and alphabetically. There’s a bit of OCD in all of this, but it’s a way, I think, of keeping some emotional distance, of relegating this part of the poetic journey to the left side of the brain where it belongs.

When submitting work rejection is the norm, as all poets and writers know, and you’re doing well if you get one poem accepted out of a hundred submissions. This can be hard to take, unless you grow alligator skin or have a plan that keeps you in motion, preventing you from spending a whole lot of time hung up on why that editor didn’t like your poems or even worse, concluding that your work should all be thrown in the toilet and never see the light of day again. To me, it’s always about writing the poem, the experience of expression and awakening to an insight that wasn’t there yesterday. I figure if I spend a lot of vital emotional fluid moaning over what didn’t happened, then I won’t have the juice to create what’s waiting to happen.

Back to the mail—it’s those self-addressed-stamped-envelopes that I look for amongst the Lands End catalogues and electric bills; checking the return address to see which journal it’s from, sussing out from their thickness if there’s an iota of a chance that a poem got accepted, then taking a kitchen knife (most often I can’t wait long enough to get them to my desk to use the letter opener) and slitting the envelope open and most often pulling out the slip of colored paper or Xeroxed memo stating, ever-so-kindly, that the editor has read my submission “with interest” but has found that “it does not meet our present needs,” or the very generous “we wish you the best in finding a home for your manuscript elsewhere.” What provides a little dangling hope is when there’s an actual scrawled message on the rejection to, “send more” or “really enjoyed these” or an arrow pointing to one of the poems with “liked this one the best” written in the margin.

It’s all okay, the submitting, the rejections and the occasional acceptance. The latter, that rare and lovely moment when you open the envelope or receive an email that says Yes to one of your brave little poems—ah, that is a glow to revel in for a day or two, maybe even share with a couple of your closest friends and, if a particularly sought-after journal takes a poem or you get more than one poem accepted, then tell the spouse, being sure to alert him/her that, of course, this doesn’t mean you’ll be getting any money for your efforts, that it’s really all about creative satisfaction anyway.

It’s almost four and there’s no mail yet. The last couple of days a substitute carrier has had our route and it’s been here before noon. Today, it seems, our regular guy is on the job and it could be as late as 5 or 6 before he arrives. The tally so far this week is:  Monday, one submission out, three rejections in; Tuesday, nothing out, nothing in; Wednesday, three submissions out and nothing in. (The mail finally arrived.) The truth of it is that it’s all about perseverance, confidence (maybe not all the time) and a lotta, lotta luck.  And, in the final analysis, it’s really in the hands of those almighty and wise poetry gods. Now, it’s on to tomorrow and to forgetting about the results and focusing on the process.