Rejection Letter

Posted on August 11, 2004 in Poetry

I won’t name the publication, but I received an irritating rejection notice today. It reminds me of the “read the fucking faq” comments you receive in some newsgroups where the faq is poorly written or the behavior being named isn’t mentioned at all:

Thanks for your honesty but we don’t accept simultaneous submissions. Good
luck with them elsewhere. See our [deleted] for full
guidelines should you be interested.

The website says, in part:

If a poem has been published before, please tell us. We don’t like to be the target of multiple submissions, but if you must do this, then at least have the courtesy to inform us. It’s extremely irritating to find we’ve selected a poem only to see it in another publication a few weeks before ours is released. We think it unfair to keep poems in limbo for an unnecessary length of time and aim to reply within three weeks.

I found no other reference to submissions posted elsewhere. This is a case of tired out editor, methinks. I do pity editors of all types, especially poetry editors because of the amount of doggerel they must wade through. But if you have a firm policy, you should word it more clearly than was the case here.