The Rejection Slip

I got a rejection e-mail from Gulf Stream Magazine a few days ago, and while it can be frustrating to wait 5 months to hear from a journal and then receive a form note,

"Unfortunately, we are unable to accept your submission for publication at this time. We wish you the best of luck placing your work elsewhere.”

for me, it’s usually, a good thing. I’ve never received any additional comments on a rejection slip, but the slip itself is a kind of impetus. The slip makes me want to reconsider the original submission, revise, or (more often than not) write something entirely new. In that spirit, I’d like to offer up a few journals I’ve been checking out recently. Perhaps we could plan our assault of poems together. Let me know where you’re submitting, or where your poems are being accepted.

BROADSIDED

http://www.broadsidedpress.org/

This is a really neat press which prints poems on broadsides and asks volunteer ‘vectors’ to distribute them throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

ANTI-
http://anti-poetry.com/

Home to one of the funniest poems I’ve read all summer, “You Can’t Pick Your Friends Nose” by Aaron Belz. http://anti-poetry.com/belzaa2/

ABZ
http://abzpress.com/default.aspx

I was really excited to find this (relatively) new magazine because it’s based in Huntington, WV, just 60 miles from Morehead. I think I was a little too excited. I submitted some poems a few months ago without noticing the “Reading Period” and, of course, they were sent back with a note telling me the “Reading Period” didn’t open until September. Haha. This Magazine has published a lot of Ohio and Kentucky poets.

Creative ID

During Amy Holman's publishing lecture last spring at Spalding, she suggested a new answer to the inevitable question, "So what kind of writing do you do?" Instead of answering with a genre, Amy urged us to fire back with a "Creative ID," an elevator-ride-length description of our artistic fingerprint. Since then, I've been struggling to compose one for myself. You'll find Matt's neatly tucked into his introduction below. Mind promises to be a little messier, but that's part of my identity, so why fight it?

Here goes: For me, the seed of a piece usually comes from a real life incident or a dream that haunts me until I decide to write it down. From there I write until I find something (usually quite unexpected) to which I can link the seed to help me, and hopefully the reader, make some sense of it. Formally, I like to experiment, using everything from sonnets and tankas to open form and prose poems. Next venture: graphic poetry!

So that's my first attempt at getting something down "on paper." We'd love to hear your Creative IDs, so feel free to post them below, or email them to us, and we'll post them here. Thanks for reading.

Introduction

Good Morning Readers,

Before I begin my introduction, I would like to thank Jill for inviting me to join this blog. I'm excited to begin this dialogue with her and to share it with a community of writers.

About me: Like Jill, I'm a recent graduate of Spalding University's MFA in Writing Program. As a poet, my work is primarily concerned with representations of the domestic sphere; but I'm also interested in interactions between the human world and the natural world. My poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Coe Review, The Louisville Review, New Southerner and Midwest Quarterly. I live in Morehead, Kentucky with my wife and two boys.

Please visit this blog often to read about my current research projects, examinations of particular elements of craft/poems, book/journal reviews, etc.

First Post

Welcome to the poetry blog of Jill Koren and Matthew Vetter. The purpose of this blog is to keep us-- and our readers-- thinking critically about poetry, to create a community of poets, and to share thoughts and resources for doing the work of poetry.

I suppose I'll begin by introducing myself. I'll let Matt introduce himself next week. I am a practicing poet who recently graduated from Spalding University's MFA in Creative Writing program. My poetry has appeared in The Louisville Review and in an anthology entitled Woman.Period (due to launch August 11th!). I currently serve as poetry editor of 94 Creations, a new literary journal. I live in Madison, Indiana with my husband, my son, and sometimes a colony of Big Brown Bats. I look forward to sharing more with you soon.