When celebrating an acceptance or wallowing in self-doubt after a rejection, I always try to remember that the poetry world is packed with the ironies of differing editorial tastes. For example, there are many tales of prize-winning poems that had previously failed to find a home despite numerous attempts to place them.
My own favourite experience was a terrific review of my pamphlet, Inventing Truth, in an extremely well-regarded journal. The piece praised and highlighted a poem that had been rejected by that very magazine a year earlier. Now, which of those views of my work do I prefer to think was right...?!
I had the opposite - a reviewer dispraising a poem that had been in the mag he was deputy editor of. I assume he either didn't know his own mind or had no actual say in what they printed.
ReplyDeleteThat certainly tops mine, Sheenagh!
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