Poetry journal submission rejection letters – a comic sampling.
Dear Poet,
Dear Poet,
Thank you for letting us consider your work. Your poem has one line we found incredibly evocative and very intriguing. Unfortunately, the rest of your verse has the consistency of baby vomit. If you have any other work that is less like baby vomit, we welcome the chance to reject it also!
Keep writing!
Dear Poet,
Dear Poet,
Thank you for allowing us to reject your work. We found reading your poem to be universally painful for our editorial staff. However, we enjoy punishing our team. Although this poem is “not for us”, we welcome additional submissions in the future as we LIKE to watch our staff suffer. It gives us pleasure. So….much….pleasure….
Are you suffering?
Keep writing!
Dear Poet,
Dear Poet,
What are you wearing? Right now? Are you holding a pen….are you holding it “firmly”? You are a BAD poet! So….so…BAD! You need punishment.
Assume the position!
Oh….and we hated your poetry.
Keep writing!
Dear Poet,
Dear Poet,
Thank you for allowing us to consider your multi-media project, “Sestinas for all Members”. Although our editorial staff admires your ekphrastic project of writing sestinas to dick pics, we are currently only considering dick pic Haiku.
Keep writing!
Dear Poet,
Dear Poet,
Our associate editor, Bob, read your recent submission and promptly ended his tenure with our publication in horror and disgust.
We hated Bob.
Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately it is not what we are looking for. But Bob was a DICK, so you have really helped us out here. Just sayin!
Keep writing!
Dear Poet,
Dear Poet,
Thank you for your submission dated May 17, 1974. We have reviewed it carefully for a very long time. Unfortunately, we find your prose a bit old fashioned and perhaps more appropriate for a simpler time, pre-21st Century. We welcome your future submissions!
Keep writing!
Dear Poet,
Dear Poet,
We really wanted to publish your work. We really…really..did want to do it. Our entire team here is in severe distress. We appreciate that your work comes from a “special” place inside of you. We are SO privileged to get to experience your poetry. Each member of our staff has been profoundly changed by your work.
Unfortunately, the team has very reluctantly chosen to go a different direction.
Please do not submit to us again for at least three years. Rejecting you again too soon would be too painful for us to bear.
Keep writing!
Rick Christiansen has been a stand-up comic, an actor, director of the improvisational comedy group, The Underground, and a corporate executive. His work can be found in the archives of Oddball Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review and other publications. He has poems forthcoming in Dumpster Fire Press and his poem “Killing Bob Dylan” has been selected for a Fall 2021 anthology by Alien Buddha Press. He is a member of the St. Louis Writers Guild. Rick lives in Missouri near his eight grandchildren and with his basset hound Annie.
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