10/26/2009

James Moore Rejection Letter

I recently received a rejection letter for my two poetry submissions to James Moore (read them here and here). I must admit that at first I wasn't sure it was a rejection (I've had this problem before). The main barrier to my comprehension was that the letter is chocked full of bureaucratic boilerplate (I mean, two pages? Wow!). I suppose this is to be expected when transitioning from running a political newsletter and website to running a literary arts journal. That said, they did manage to reject two submissions with one letter (Exhibit A, below), which is a veteran move.

I've posted their rejection letter below, along with my own annotation which will hopefully clear things up for you, the reader, and perhaps help the editors of James Moore's publications shorten up future letters (click to expand the images):
Section B) "Thank you for your submission."

Section C) "We received hundreds of excellent poems for consideration for our upcoming issue. Because of this, we weren't able to accept all the great work that was sent to us."

Section D) "Unfortunately, we have to reject your submission."

Section E) "But we still totally like you."
Section E continued) "No, seriously. We do."

Section F) "And we hope you keep submitting, though preferably somewhere else."

Section G) "Yours, The New Intern"

4 comments:

Caitlin said...

Rob, you are my hero.

Unknown said...

So does this mean that your letters are going to be posted on the website?

Unknown said...

Seriously, this is awesome.

Rob Taylor said...

Thanks, guys!