LESLEY WHEELER

Tag: rejection

  • Three editors on rejection and persistence

    I finished choosing Shenandoah poems a couple of weeks ago. It’s such a pleasure to accept work, but there was so much strong poetry that I had to turn down, I could have built another good issue out of what I rejected. Honestly, I agonized so much I wondered if I’m cut out for this. […]

  • The present and future of pandemic poetry

    Like a sad dragon, I’m currently sitting on a diminishing hoard of potential poems for future issues of Shenandoah—Fall ’21 and Spring ’22, presuming we get there–knowing I can’t keep ALL the gold. I’m already rejecting good poems, trying to get down to 20-ish from more than 700 batches. The last couple of weeks have […]

  • On first looking into Shenandoah’s submissions

    Turns out there’s some good news about rejection I never really grasped before. I’m reading poetry for Shenandoah in earnest now and realizing rejected poems DO reach sympathetic readers, at least if you send them to well-edited magazines: the editors and staff readers themselves. I am moved, entertained, impressed, and intrigued by far more work than Shenandoah can accept. […]

  • In which the perverse poet is chuffed about rejection

    Despite the frigid temperatures, my winter so far has been poetically electric. My long-awaited chapbook arrived in early December, then several journals containing a poem or two of mine suddenly went live or hit print (here’s one), PLUS Poetry Daily honored me with a New Year’s Day feature, PLUS Amy Lemmon and Sarah Freligh at […]

  • Reasons to be cheerful, part 4

    We’re supposed to be cheery in late December, right? Ho ho ho. I’ve been having a rough time, for reasons I can’t write about at the moment. But like H.D., when times are bad, I eat my way through it. This can be literally true: hello, Christmas pudding! But I also mean that I chew through piles […]

  • Fighting about poems: Shenandoah NZ Diary, Part II

    Received by Email While Guest-Editing I reject your rejection. You are not qualified to cast me off. I’m a luminary: let me direct your attention to an interstellar anthology. You, sir or madam, have provoked a righteous snit. A catastrophic reversion of my recent surgery. You institutionalized me. My well- being’s been battered by bad […]