my poetry has been rejected twice today.

i've written about this before, though i'm not sure where or when: rejection is awesome. it's hard and it sucks, but it's great. there's nothing like the feeling of knowing that the worst has happened--i mean, not the overall worst, of course, but the worst as far as the submission itself goes. there are times when it's not the worst--when you feel like a company (i'm talking singing now) is playing games that you're not interested in playing, and that the rejection stems from that--in a way, that's worse than getting rejected flat out for being not what the publication is looking for--or not being good enough.

i'm not past the point of caring. that would be a sucky point to be at. but my particular fire blazes well when fed by the fuel of actual adversity. that is probably too broad of a claim. what i mean is, that being rejected just makes me think, not "they're idiots, and they should have accepted me," but "i'm good." i'm good. being rejected proves that i am good somehow.

when i get accepted, i have say things like, "oh, i don't know why they chose me, tee hee," and it's sincere, because that's the way i am. but when i get rejected, i get to know it: i'm good, and if they don't want me, it's not because i'm bad.

this is with poetry. it isn't so much like this with singing.

it is because they don't see what i'm doing, or if they see what i'm doing they aren't interested in it--which is their loss. i can say it's their loss because i assume that it's a loss they freely accept--if i said to someone in regards to their having rejected my writing, "it's your loss," they'd probably laugh slightly and tell me to keep up the attitude. and having already rejected me, i know that my thinking it's their loss is not of particular interest to them, if you see what i'm getting at. they're not idiots. they just don't get it, and possibly they don't want it. and that's fine.

i'm kind of over thinking that my work isn't good enough. that's a mid-twenties thing. the truth is that i knew, when i wrote the first of the poems to my muse, that i was writing actual poetry. that was at least five years ago. before that, yes, sure, my poems might have been well-worded, but they weren't anything special, because they weren't saying anything i didn't already know, and i knew that. but now my work has animus--it has its own soul. not every sample of it. there are weak poems and strong poems, and it can be hard to know which is which.

there's no point to this. i'm not even trying to make myself feel better. there are no words to the feeling i'm currently experiencing, and that's kind of the definition, to me, of a feeling worth not attempting to temper. my poems are good. they're private and at times incomprehensible, but they're good. ha ha, one at this point falls back on emily dickinson's idea of publication. she wasn't alone in believing herself good. but she was alone.

it's a treasure, to be able--to be allowed--to believe in yourself when things are apparently against you. i very much appreciate it, as well as the opportunity to exercise said belief.