Talking Craft With MrMary: The Reality of Rejection Letter

One of the most important experiences of being a writer is rejection. I have gotten rejected recently from  some pretty good journals but  it wasn’t a flat out rejection. Take a look:

Rejection # 1

This is a popular and really good poetry magazine and it would be a dream for me to be published here.

Dear David,

Thank you for your submission!

We enjoyed the voice in your poems; in particular we enjoyed: Charles, however, they are not what we are seeking for inclusion in [name hidden] We very much look forward to reading more from you in the future and encourage you to try us again.

Please feel free to submit again, we only ask that you wait at least three months before re-submitting.

Regards,

Editor in Chief

Rejection 2

This is a great publication, it is not as “high-ranking” as the one above but still a great  publication

We wanted to thank you for the opportunity to read your work. At this time we’re going to release the work for publication elsewhere. Best of luck to you and keep submitting!

You need to check the poem below for the line with two city names I think “start” needs to be plural. I liked the poem but not quite right – do try us again in the future.

Editor

Some Thoughts:

I think it takes a bit of time to get used to rejection letters.  After all when one is a writer one has to spend a lot of time honing one’s skills and  this happens usually in the ambiance of an action packed workday filled with a ton of responsibilities. I think rejection letter are important because they, for me at least, teach the writer/poet/story-teller:

1. 1. How to become better at selecting the appropriate genre and niche for one’s writing. For me I have spent the last year working on making my verse technically sound and I can see the difference
2. 2. How to write in such a way as to make your work accessible to others,
3. 3 How to proofread and edit your own work, etc

My plan still is the same, it is to  publish in as many magazines ad publications as I can. (I have a targeted amount of publications in mind I would like to achieve. Then I will go on to create a chapbook or two and then finally hopefully then publish ad actual collection traditionally.

Every great writer or poet has had to deal with rejection. I felt that the sooner I was able to not take it so personally the sooner I was able to benefit from them and work to improve my craft

I just thought I would share

MrMary

MrMary on Blogging: Effectuate change, dick jokes or both – My Responce to Daan’s Departure

Effectuate change, dick jokes or both

Bloggers can do much to effectuate change in the world and I wonder aside from the joking around is there anything more to blogging ?

The idea that everyone is their own brand makes me sick. A brand is something to be sold  something being buy into and invest in. It is  a product of a capitalistic mindset. I create a smartly packaged  product (my thoughts) and sell it to people. After it gains some popularity I invite other people to invest in it (with comments and reblogs) and I lend my “fame” to make that person popular ( directing my readership  to visit their site) That’s the bare bones process. I suspect because I am quite cynical, the discussions, that come from this set up are neutered in that they lack anything “living in them that can effectuate change”. – (There is more to it than this of course but Ill write about that in another post.)

However there is another side to it. Many of us come here from the trials and tribulations of our day and we need to relax. We need some sort of human interaction.  So we come online we visit our favorite bloggers we talk we interact leave salacious comments on each others blogs. And I cannot help but wonder,  how engaged should each of us be in talking about the social crises of the world ?  I think that this has to be answered on a case by case basis. I personally am sometimes serious, and am sometimes, sarcastic and sybaritical in my style of expression, other times I am  all over the place. I am here as  I am in real life. For instance I wrote a lot about the Trayvon Martin case and I have also written a post about channeling the of General Sherman in his total  warfare campaign when approaching cunnilingus for the first time. In effect this me all the fucking time, but I need another job so I cant but my real name here. For me as a blogger what counts in the type of responses I get from you the reader.  I don’t write for reblogs or likes, I write to share with you. I hope my blog never really gets popular so I can keep talking with you all. That is what this Greatest Moment in Blog History Series on this blog is all about. It is a bombastically satirical declaration of the fact that I am person who wants to talk and share with other people about what is going on in the world around me and of course the contents of my own silly thoughts as encapsulated by this following picture.

Admit it You like the Fat Powerlifter look

Daan and His Departure

If you don’t know Daan you’re missing out. This is not a recommendation for his blog which is a great blog, this is me David saying something nice about a real person who just so happens to be a blogger. He is leaving the blogsophere, you can read about it here. Let me share one poignant part of his blog post:

I started this blog to inspire, educate and, perhaps, help someone. To make people think about what’s happening around them and in the world today, through poetry, short stories, flash-fiction and, occasionally, a personal post. The problem with owning a blog is: you can’t control what sort of people you attract and you can’t punch those that annoy you.The trolls know that. On the internet they can be the man (or woman) they never could be in real life. I usually ignore these people, or I set them straight, after which they usually (sort of) apologize, but if I was able to teleport myself  to each of their faces, I promise you, hospitals worldwide would be having capacity problems.

I read their blogs and all I see is a little, insecure person adding layer after layer and lie after lie to their empty core, pretending they have some sort of dignity and principles, when all they really want is attention. To feed their insecurity. And they succeed. Their veiled self-glorification actually brings them readers.

It sickens me.

This world is already filled with masses paying attention to the wrong things and all these fools are doing is adding to the noise and distracting the people from the actual issues. Nobody gives a shit about the thousands of people that die every day, because they have no food or water. Nobody gives a shit about the children that built the very laptop I’m typing on right now for 5 cents an hour.

My thoughts

When I look at human history there have been individuals who through personal effort and being at the right place at the right time have effectuated a change that has moved people and turned civilization in one direction or another. I doubt there will ever be a time and I hope, I’m proven wrong, where everyone is so conscious and aware but more so empathetic to the different causes that affect people around them. Utopia’s don’t exist even in our minds. The internet is a facsimile of the real world. It’s a place where illicit activity go one, it is a place where horrible transactions are made, and its a place where the venom of our everyday struggles in the real world make a home for themselves. My take was always to make a few but significant connects to the people that cross my path.

Daan has pointed to a real truth, that many people have stated before: that human beings cannot stand much reality or that in many cases we choose to keep ourselves blissfully ignorant rather than accept the world and our role in its present state. That I don’t think is gonna be fixed any time soon.  It part of the existential crisis we face when we choose to either contionue to wallow in our own sociological and personal excrementfiguratively or to inform ourselves and our enrich our experiences of the world and its denizens. I am sad to see Daan go honestly. It makes me want to go to, because sometimes it’s get nauseatingly ridiculous seeing the same bullshit Daan talks mentions day after day. Actually I have often wondered could I make better use of my time writing for my own publications? Daan will be sorely missed (like how I was by my prom date- sorely). I wish him all the best in his endeavors and look forward to what he creates next. I know it will be impactful, a work of passion , moving, at times light-hearted, far-reaching in its scope just like Daan himself. I hope he comes back to write more but I can tell the conviction in his tone that it probably wont happen.

So to Daan, You will be missed, and you’re always welcome here, much love

Dave

Bro-Hug

Related articles

• The 25 Best Bloggers, 2013 Edition (techland.time.com)
• MrMary on Blogging and Writing: Reflects openly on LittleMsWordy’s Blogging: Work or Hobby? (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)
• Guest Post for Daan van den Bergh (rendezvouswithrenee.com)
• MrMary’s Twitter Experiment: The Public Sphere is dead Rant (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)
• MrMary Cares: The Readers of this Blog Are Helping to Address Poverty in the World (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)
• Responce to : This is Justice by blogger TarnishedSophia (aspoonfulofsuga.wordpress.com)

MrMary’s Take on Poetry Writing Month: Day 1: Turtle Necks and Words

Hey People behind a screen who I don’t see and/or know sorta,

Today I learned that it’s national poetry writing month and I am a bit happy and appalled by that. It kind of like my first sexual experience in many ways, that I cannot go into. I’m happy that poetry is being pushed to the masses in such a way as to coerce, inspire communication and shared activity. I’m appalled at the same time because I feel this coercion and inspiration has nothing to do with poetry and is in fact a farce.

Poetry to me, is something that someone doesn’t choose to do. You don’t ,one day after an epic 2 hour pushing session on the toilet decide you’re going to change your life and become a poet, right after you find a cheap fibre supplement. Poetry is something that happens, and it happens without reason.

The Illiad, The odyssey, Beowulf, Baudelaire’s Fleur Du mal, Rimbaud’s Drunken boat, T.S Elliot’s The Wasteland, Dante’s Inferno -all  these great testaments to the human experience didn’t come out of a competition or a national writing month. To me poetry comes from pain, not like pain like anal with only a smattering of lube – not that I would know anything about that, but the mechanics don’t look promising.

To me poetry is born from  an intense experience of living that forever changes someone and cauterizes their eyes to the effluvial substitute for live that we have grown so fond of. That’s the pain

Where do words come from?

by Vénus Khoury-Ghata

Where do words come from?
from what rubbing of sounds are they born
on what flint do they light their wicks
what winds brought them into our mouths

Their past is the rustling of stifled silences
the trumpeting of molten elements
the grunting of stagnant waters

Sometimes
they grip each other with a cry
expand into lamentations
become mist on the windows of dead houses
crystallize into chips of grief on dead lips
attach themselves to a fallen star
dig their hole in nothingness
breathe out strayed souls

Words are rocky tears
the keys to the first doors
they grumble in caverns
lend their ruckus to storms
their silence to bread that’s ovened alive

Not that MrMary is a Poet

Is this the face of a poet

It has been said by Stendhal actually I believe that the more people you attract the more superficial is the connection between them. I wonder if the same holds true for poetry and national poetry writing month ? Some of you may know that MrMary, aside from being a jerk has also been called a poet. I published poems in two magazines in 2012 and between sleeping next to raw sewage, trying to move before i get kicked another home, and the millions things that are   at time and is slowly glacially editing a collection for publication. I thought I would share with you from my notebook 30 poems/observations I have. They are raw non-edited, transcribed from  my weird notebook with a hand drawn picture of boobies on the cover.

I never wanted to be a poet or write poetry,  I used to think it was boring and crazy and that to be a poet would mean I would have to fold turtle necks at the Gap because I would be broke without work, selling bodily fluids to buy lunch and lotion for my hands … ( I can’t seem to be too serious today). I will be video recording these for you. I wasn’t able to do this one because I live with fucking animals , but enjoy. I guess I am a writer tho because I am sensitive about my shit so be nice

Untitled 7

It passes you by;
impactful moments in your life
that you cannot commit to memory.

Other people  can’t see them either
and I’m willing to bet that the very act
of seeking them makes them unattainable.

Somewhere
Trapped is
the best joke we ever
dropped onto waiting friends
suspecting the unexpected. The best meal we had
is still being eaten and the
kindest gesture we ever did, still grows
in the dark, shedding the fruit insignificant
reward.

I witnessed today,
one of these moments

There I was
hand on my chin,
elbow planted on the
inside window ledge, staring
through the living room-window,
counting all the bricks that hid
from my field of vision,
anything worth seeing

A box,
45 bricks across
and 25 bricks down
was all that was holding me
from life or maybe I should
call it Living

and That
made me laugh
for a good 5 minutes.
But no one was their to hear it
not even I.

 

 

MrMary Reads: Subtle Degrees

subtle degrees
of domination and servitude
are what you know as love

but love is different
it arrives complete
just there
like the moon in the window

like the sun
of neither east nor west
nor of anyplace

when that sun arrives
east and west arrive

desire only that
of which you have no hope
seek only that
of which you have no clue

love is the sea of not-being
and there intellect drowns

this is not the Oxus River
or some little creek
this is the shoreless sea;
here swimming ends
always in drowning

To my Home-Gurl Becca from 25tofly.com

My Home-Gurl  Becca commented on my post: Aside from Venereal Disease Love Really Does Conquer All with the following line:

What is love? Baby don’t hurt me.

So I, being a staunch supporter of brinkmanship, have decided to push things   further into absurdity by posting this. Everyone  play along and check out Becca’s page.

Little Known Fact about Becca

Did you know she can light up the South with a smile? No exaggeration! It’s a great skill to have especially when many southern states are trying to secede from the USA because they  don’t like their democratically Elected President !!!