1 Year, 100 Rejections: COMPLETE

As many of you know, I've been submitting the heck out of my poems this year, trying my hardest to get 100 rejections, and today is the big day, my friends. The Antioch Review sent me my one-hundredth rejection since September 1, when I started this little project. I have already blogged about the first seventy-five rejections I received, but I'll wrap up the last 25 here.

76. Anti-: May 7: Form letter
77. Threepenny Review: May 8: Form letter
78. POETRY: May 11: Form letter
79. DIAGRAM: May 12: Form letter
80. Crazyhorse: May 13: Form letter
81. The Los Angeles Review: May 19: Form letter
82. Hayden's Ferry Review: May 20: Form letter
83. New Ohio Review: May 23: Form letter (I had queried to ask about the status of my submission, as they had it for nearly 200 days. The editor responded and said one reader had enjoyed it and it had been passed through to the next round for consideration. Later that day I received this form letter.)
84. The New Yorker: May 25: Form letter
85. DIAGRAM: May 25: Form letter
86. The Atlantic Monthly: May 31: Form letter
87. Knockout Magazine: May 31: Form letter
88-89: A Capella Zoo: May 31 & June 1: Form letters (They require you to submit your poems individually, which helped when I had to withdraw one from consideration due to its acceptance elsewhere)
90. Rattle: June 5: Form letter
91. Kill Author: June 10: Personal letter
92. The Paris Review: June 10: Form letter
93. The New Republic: June 12: Form letter
94. Foundling Review: June 12: Personal letter (This time they referred to me as BEJ! A nickname basis for rejecting me. I like it.)
95. Gargoyle: June 13: Personal letter (With some suggestions for other magazines to submit to; awesome!)
96. Threepenny Review: June 13: Form letter
97. The Orange Room Review: June 14: Personal letter
98. Blackbird: June 14: Form letter
99. Anderbo: June 15: Form letter
100: The Antioch Review: June 15: Form letter

Here is it, guys!


I feel pretty good about the project. In the time it took me to get 100 rejections, I also got 12 acceptances. If you do a little middle school math, that's a ratio of 1 acceptance to every 8.33 (33 repeating!) rejections. I don't mind that at all.


Special mention goes to Yaddo and FAWC for both rejecting me also, and to every preschool kid who yelled NO! at me this year.