The Kindest Form of No

Today I sent out poems to fourteen journals (but one email got bounced back to me--I'll have to figure out why and re-send it tomorrow). I love sending out poems. It's a laborious process--it took me four days--but so soothing, all those envelopes full of things you made, lined up neatly and ready to go off and encounter other people. I don't even mind the inevitable rejections--as anyone who's been on the receiving end of a slush pile knows, that's just how it goes . . . submissions flow in, rejections flow out, in a natural process, like tides. I've been spending some time in the not-unpleasant purgatory of the personal rejection, so I hope this second round to those places will help me claw up to the paradise of getting published, but at least now it will be fun to check the mail again . . . it's addictive, watching for those little envelopes with your own handwriting on them.