by Robert Peake

In the time it took me to write, proofread and send this piece around to some trusted friends for feedback, I received three more rejections of my poetry, bringing my lifetime total up to 80. Fortunately, I am not the only one receiving these things. This month, multiple Read Write Poem members asked me if I would respond to the question, “What should you learn from rejection letters?”

I believe asking questions like this indicates a mindset necessary to sustaining a life steeped in art — a mindset seeking constantly to learn. Practically speaking, there are three components of a rejection letter worth considering if you want to learn from them: the fact of rejection, the source of the rejection and the contents of the letter.

The first part is tough to swallow: Your poems have been rejected. You suspected as much when you saw the thin SASE in your mailbox or politely titled subject line in your email inbox. There it is: rejection. A single data point, which does not indicate failure but certainly the lack of your hoped-for success.

But rejected by whom? The senior editor of a national magazine? An intern filtering fast-and-furious through the slush pile of a university press? An editor-friend who has written a candid page of feedback? Discern what you can about where the rejection came from, since as much as this stings, it may also tell you more about how far your piece went.

And finally, what was the nature of the rejection? Did you get a form slip, with nicely worded stock phrases? Or a personalized message complimenting specific aspects of your work and expressing sincere regrets at the editor’s obligation to clear backlog before taking new artistic risks? Some rejections can almost bolster your spirits as much as an acceptance. Almost. But all rejections can teach something.

That said, it can be tempting, and dangerous, to jump to conclusions based on thin information. The very fact of rejection is insufficient grounds to conclude your that poems are terrible, that you are a terrible poet, possibly a terrible person, and that giving up writing for good would be a service to humanity. And yet, despite numerous rejection letters, whenever I get a new one, a twinge of this defeatist thinking still flashes through my brain.

So, one important thing rejection letters teach you is — how to take rejection letters! Though that may sound glib and tautological, the truth is that rejection is a major part of writing poetry. So, learning to suppress the self-sabotage reflex is a requisite skill of the trade.

However, it can be equally tempting, in the name of self-preservation, to suppress useful feedback, and this is equally dangerous. You were rejected for a reason. It could be nothing more than a fatal combination of statistics and the subjectivity of taste. In fact, this is likely the case.

Nonetheless, I have found it useful, at minimum, to keep track of my acceptances as well as my rejections — not necessarily to save the slips, but to at least note the submission date, journal, poems, rejection date and any comments on a spreadsheet.

Taken over a long period of time, and with a boulder-sized crystal of salt, this can sometimes give me a feel for how well a particular poem is faring out there. But beyond the weird science of tracking results in aggregate — a process as fraught with pseudoscience and superstition as a fisherman chasing the perfect bait — is the sometimes-useful nature of the rejection itself.

I say “sometimes-useful” because first, it is incredibly rare, in my experience, to receive anything more than a form letter or standard slip; second, because what can seem like a personalized note of encouragement may be nothing more than a vague attempt to assuage the sub-editor’s conscience, keep you on as a subscriber, or both; and finally, because even earnest feedback is not always necessarily helpful.

Consider the publication. I will take this opportunity to say that if you do not both respect a journal and find its sensibilities sympatico to your own, you have no business sending your work there. None. If you do so, your first response to their rejection slip should not be surprise, but rather, as a writer friend-of-a-friend once quipped upon opening his mailbox, “Oh, look! It’s the rejection slip I sent off for.” Indeed, you did.

Assuming you sent poems to a journal you like and respect, it might be useful to see how far it went. I rarely save rejection letters. But I have filed away a personal note from a prominent editor who admired my work — not only because it soothed my ego, but because I intend to remind him, in the cover letter of next year’s submission, how much he said he liked my previous poems.

I also know a handful of editors whom I also consider friends. I do my best to maintain a healthy schizophrenia between our friendship and our writer-editor relationship. Still, they will often give candid remarks when they reject my poems, and this I take to heart.

The key, I think, in all of this, is knowing what to take to heart, and what to take on the chin. With regard to more detailed feedback, this is an opportunity to gain much-needed outside perspective on your work. Learning how a respected outsider has responded to your work can help you to think more like an outsider, refining your poems toward greater publishability.

That said, the submission process is not, and should not, be your primary mechanism for seeking detailed feedback. Workshops, mentors, and trusted poet-friends are all richer, and often more tactful sources of constructive criticism.

While none of the above indicates a hard-and-fast rule set for separating the nutritious elements of feedback from stock rejection chaff, it should at least give you some sense of how I have managed to navigate this uncomfortable but inevitable topic in my own career. In closing, I would like to answer a more philosophical variation of this question, which is: “What can you learn from rejection in general?”

In addition to rejection teaching you how to deal with rejection, it shows you what you are made of. I believe success in the arts often depends on longevity, that longevity depends on endurance, and that the only way to endure is to love the process. Rejection is part of the process.

So, above all, rejection has taught me perseverance in the discipline I love, kindness toward my sometimes-fragile writerly self, and that the only person who can declare my defeat in the poetry business is me. In the face of rejection, I simply refuse to call it quits — time and time again.

I suppose I could, like Emily Dickinson, lock up my poems in a hope chest, and still enjoy the writing process. But to me, poetry is a conversation — with myself, my forbearers, contemporaries and possibly future inheritors. Publication is the medium of that conversation, and with it, especially early on, comes rejection and more rejection. I won’t pretend to like it. But I can say with certainty that by embracing rejection as a teacher, I know that I have grown as a poet.

Wishing you all good writing, great success and a graceful relationship to rejection when it comes. Send future questions and comments to advice (at) readwritepoem (dot) org. And, please! Enough with rejection. I can only take so much.

Robert Peake studied poetry at U.C. Berkeley and in the Master of Fine Arts in Writing program at Pacific University, Ore. His poems have appeared in North American Review, Rattle and are forthcoming in Poetry International. Robert writes about poetry on his website at robertpeake.com.