Rejections and Dead Poets

New Mexico, photo by Mike Myer












Blogger Linda O’Connell (http://lindaoconnell.blogspot.com) encourages writers to practice patience when waiting on news about the progress of their possible publication. It is good advice, and while I usually toss my pieces out into the publishing world and then wait for results, I sometimes feel antsy with impatience on a certain piece or project. How can those editors not get back to me quickly with a powerful and positive response!



This weekend, I got a rejection from Cappers that I had almost forgotten I had submitted. It was a unlikely piece maybe, but it touched on Route 66 info which is popular right now. But the real news in their rejection was that they will no longer be printing fiction or poetry. How sad, another story source bites the dust. I think good fiction is so necessary. A good story is entertaining, informative and lets readers try on situations in their own mind, to see alternative responses to circumstances that life throws at us. Poetry is important as well. A little here, a little there is the music or song we often miss in our daily living. Good poetry is like a tiny, joyous bell in our ear.


Thanks to poet Denise Low (http://deniselow.blogspot.com) I was made aware of a new poet event wwhen I read about a 1st Annual Dead Poets Remembrance Day. It is a poetry reading across the nation at the graves of American poets. The date is October 7th, 2010 and you can read more about it here:  http://deadpoes.org/DiaDead.html.


“We are launching this tour in order to encourage groups of people in every state to get together on October 7th to honor our dead poets by reading at their graves,” said Walter Skold, the founder of the Dead Poets Society of America. Reading will be done at the graves of the graves of some of the most and least-well known poets in the US, including Robert Lowell, Donald Justice, James Whitcomb Riley, John Trumball, and Sarah Whitman among others. Denise Low, former poet laureate of Kansas, is number 18 on the list of state poets laureate who are endorsing the celebration of Dead Poets Remembrance Day.

Due to many things, I haven't written a thing for weeks other than disjointed emails and checks to pay bills! But I have hope, always hope. Tonight I finally got to sit down with two literary journals and thumb through their jewels. In the back of the latest issue of River Styx is an announcement that the 2011 Schlafly Beer Micro-Fiction contest is open until Dec. 31. Ah, that is lots of time yet-500 words in four months? I might make that one. The nice thing about this contest is the $20 entry fee, a steep one but it gets a subscription to River Styx so writers win for sure. For info go to:http://riverstyx.org/contests/index.php