Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

My first rejections from literary journals were a gut punch. I took the plunge to see how my poems would fare in the big wide world of lit magazines, hopeful that I would find an audience. I had, until then, only shared my work with friends. I purchased the trade book Poets Market and identified which publications I thought my work best fit. As instructed in the chapter “Insider Tips on What Editors Want,” I sent only five poems. They were carefully curated to match the tastes of editors at five chosen literary journals.

This was in the days before online submissions. To write the cover letter, make out checks for submission fees, stuff the envelopes with poems and a self-addressed stamped envelope, then drive to the post office, took me several hours. When I deposited my poems into the big blue mailbox that first time, I felt the glow of pride and confidence.

Several days (not weeks) later, the poems were returned with little slips of dismissive remarks inside: “Doesn’t do it for us; please submit in three years,” “We deliberated long and hard; alas, these poems never reached the finish line.” “Nice sonnets. We don’t publish these.” Ouch. The swiftness and brevity of responses stung. Maybe, maybe, I wasn’t cut out to write poems. It felt personal. The feeling lingered for days.

Of course, it wasn’t personal. Eventually I accepted that my pain was… part of the process. All artists experience the dreaded “no thank you” many times over. Think of those stories of the visual artist not selected for a group show, or the actor who doesn’t get the callback; or the dancer whose tryout was just shy of their peers. The best of them use it to fuel their creative fires. Even after small or great success as an artist, the hurt of falling short in face of what you want, never goes away. Some desired achievement is always on the horizon.

Today’s poem reminds me that artists exist in a culture of rejection. And over time, the little illusory nicks to your ego, and the weight of commitment to your art, either extinguishes your fire or has you recommit even more, driven by that sheer love of making.

Film Theory
by Xan Forest Phillips

A character I love dies and I am ruined.
Things that haven’t happened hurt me considerably.
Hurt me considerably, and I’ll act like nothing happened.
Nothing happened, but I expired on the cellular level.
Cell death corresponds to an intangible loss.
Intangible loss is fiction’s cornerstone.
I corner fiction for a confession: I’m not real! None of this is.
Fiction cannot unplant an image, it can only corrupt it.
Film corrupts an image at 24 frames per second.
When an image corrupts a body, we call this character.
A character wears a body, not the other way around.
A body wears shame, its own or a director’s.
Anything that contradicts a director, they cut.
A cut is a place where I have been severed from myself.
A character is a version severed from itself.
A version deceased withers on its person.

"Film Theory" by Xan Forest Phillips. Used by permission of the poet.