Literary Rejection

When I worked for ZYZZYVA between 2007 and 2009, I spent hours sorting through the slush pile, skimming cover letters, and smirking at resumes. I would trash everything but the manuscripts and the SASEs (self-addressed stamped envelopes).

On my desk, within reach of my left hand, would be a stack of freshly copied rejection letters. I would date-stamp one of these and include it with each manuscript/SASE pair. Gradually I would build a stack of submissions, sometimes hundreds, 99% of which would never get close to being published.

Howard Junker, the founder and now-former editor of ZYZZYVA, would look at every last essay, short story, free-verse poem, and "excerpt from my unpublished novel." Most of the time he would read the first paragraph or stanza, stuff the manuscript and rejection letter into the SASE, and toss the package into the outgoing mail. Sometimes he would persevere through a whole piece, then dispose of it in the same manner. Every now and then, a submission would survive. There it would sit, palpitant with relief, on the office futon.

Ultimately it, too, would probably be rejected.

In an industry full of unpaid slush-pile interns, Howard's routine was an extraordinary display of editorial diligence. Nevertheless, he would occasionally catch flak for refusing to alter his standard rejection letter, with its standard apology "for not offering comments or suggestions," and its standard handwritten (and repeatedly photocopied) sign-off: "Onward!"

("As if we're all on some glorious boat ride to the tropics, sailing through a storm.")

But I, for one, liked Howard's form letter. It was kind ("Do not be discouraged by this or any other momentary setback") yet blunt ("I don't think a few quick remarks would really help"), and unmistakably Junkerian in tone. Why change it?

Besides, I'm not sure how writers would feel if they actually received personalized rejections.

I've often had this thought during the past few weeks, as I've been plowing through microfilm of a nineteenth-century periodical called the Golden Era. Like ZYZZYVA, the Era was based in San Francisco and devoted to west-coast literature. In a weekly column entitled "To Our Correspondents," the editors would publish feedback to recent submissions. Usually they offered polite encouragement. Sometimes, though, they wrote things like this:

Dobbs: There are only two objections to your communication; one, that it is too lengthy - the other, that it is sadly devoid of all manner of interest.

Well, then. Onward?

Emily, Animated

What would Emily Dickinson have made of YouTube? I bet she would have dug its weirdness, its tendency toward brevity, its profusion of surprising associations.

Yesterday I stumbled upon (as one is forever "stumbling upon" YouTube things) the odd little video below: a short animation by Maureen Selwood paired with a reading by Blair Brown of Dickinson's poem "I started Early - Took my Dog."

I would recommend reading the poem first. It's one of my favorites. And please, watch out for that third line; it might trip you up.

*          *          *

I started Early - Took my Dog -
And visited the Sea -
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me -

And Frigates - in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands -
Presuming Me to be a Mouse -
Aground - opon the Sands -

But no Man moved Me - till the Tide
Went past my simple Show -
And past my Apron - and my Belt
And past my Boddice - too -

And made as He would eat me up -
As wholly as a Dew
Opon a Dandelion's Sleeve -
And then - I started - too - And He -

He followed - close behind -
I felt His Silver Heel Opon my Ancle -
Then my Shoes
Would overflow with Pearl -

Until We met the Solid Town -
No One He seemed to know -
And bowing - with a Mighty look -
At me - The Sea withdrew -

*          *          *

Now for the video (the reading starts at the 20-second mark, after an introduction by none other than Garrison Keillor):



This kind of video - a classic poem coupled with a commissioned animation - has wonderful potential. When I think of the many layers of meaning that might emerge from the interplay of spoken word and moving image, the cultural critic in me goes all tingly. He's like, "Technology really does open up new possibilities for art!"

But ultimately Selwood's animation doesn't do much for me. Perhaps it's too straightforward. We hear about a dog and the ocean, we see a dog on a beach; we hear about shoes filling with pearls, we see a bunch of pearls falling toward a pair of shoes. This literality has a deadening effect. Dickinson's words are so alive, so well tuned, so definitive, that any re-presentation of them is bound to seem inferior.

More to the point, though - and at the risk of stating the obvious - the images of "I started Early - Took my Dog" aren't meant to be seen. The poem's power lies in the fraught space between reading the text and visualizing what it describes.

Mischievously, Dickinson begins with a quotidian scene: taking the dog for a morning walk by the sea. Then, with no warning, not even an introductory clause, she hits us with "Mermaids" in a "Basement" and "Frigates" with "Hempen Hands." The sea morphs into a multi-story house, then into a ravenous man. The dog vanishes, apparently.

As the proceedings grow more and more surreal, as the narrative departs from the shore of the everyday, we realize this isn't a poem about a walk. It isn't about a leisurely, sun-dappled, Wordsworthian encounter with nature. No, it's more like an allegory - an allegory for... what? Death? Orgasm? Gender violence? Spiritual terror?

Dickinsonianly, the poem never settles. It resists our impulse to determine and delimit meaning, to tell a story, to paint a picture. And yet it haunts us, calls us back, tempts us to understand.

I mean, what happened to that damn dog?

Often, when a film adaptation of a beloved book comes out, readers say they would prefer to continue "imagining," as opposed to "knowing," what certain settings and characters "look like." This type of complaint has always bugged me, and now I know why: when I read, I rarely visualize things with any precision or permanence. From reading to rereading, the images shift, become new. A film adaptation, then, merely provides an alternate, equally nondefinitive set of possibilities.

So I suppose that part of the pleasure I take in reading literature (can it be called "pleasure" when it's a mixture of frustration, fascination, and compulsion?) inheres in the maddening, ever-fruitful absence of certainty.