SHEL SILVERSTEIN WAS A PERVERT

Roses Are Red, Everyone’s Poems Are Terrible

My friend's poem was rejected from a poetry pub and the notes are hilarious

As previously stated, I don’t care for poetry. All poetry. If I had to pick the type of poetry I disliked the least, it would be haiku because they’re short.

Humans have innate knowledge of poetry and instinctually produce it. Mankind figured out poetry before we learned how to write it down. For this reason, I don’t hold it against anyone who writes poetry. It would be like being mad at someone for being hungry. Only when forced to read poetry do I have a problem with it.

Poetry has no hard rules. You can rhyme, you can not rhyme. I think the only rule is making a paragraph break after every line and that’s debatable.

How do you tell good poetry from bad poetry? Simple.

All poetry is bad poetry. The best poem ever written is still lousy.

I had to laugh when my friend told me she had a poem rejected from a poetry publication. It wasn’t just rejected, it was accepted into the publication by an editor then rejected after the fact by the publication owner!

My friend isn’t a nobody. She’s a very popular writer on Medium. Much more popular than I and for good reason. If I owned a publication, I’d want her in it. Even if the story wasn’t all that, her name equals thousands of automatic clicks.

And that’s the thing with getting accepted to most larger publications. It’s not so much what you write, but who you are. Tim Denning claims he’s been rejected before but I’m sure he gets much more leeway on his writing quality than someone with 20 followers and a Bitmoji profile photo.

Some editors who I can’t name take their roles way too seriously, as if they’re getting paid for what their publication produces. Like this poetry dork that rejected my friend’s work.

When my friend told me the publication owner left notes, I demanded to see them so I could make fun of it in MuddyUm.

Hogan Torah pauses typing and looks at the camera with a smirk on his face, then goes back to typing on his computer.

My friend sent me the notes and I was not disappointed. Content galore. Let the shredding begin!

“I am, I’m sorry to say, not really happy this piece got published as it is.”

Was the pub owner so mad that this wretched poem was published in his fancy important poetry publication that he forgot how to write? I know these are notes, but yikes.

“Actually, the thing that I’m really thinking is that maybe…” Ugh, if you’re going to be a dick, be a dick. Don’t be a flaccid uncircumcised leaky dick.

It’s poetry. Your editor saw my friend's name, knows she’s a good writer as everyone on Medium does, and published it. Don’t be mad at the writer for your failure to give the editors of your publication instructions about your criteria.

“Beginning with “Hearth”. That’s a really archaic word…”

Yeah, it’s archaic. Like the hipster hearth-baked sandwich place that just opened up down the street that’s got a line around the block. Total relic. You know what else is old? The earth. Which the hearth is a homophone and a metaphor for.

I may hate poetry but I understand it. The whole point of poetry is being long-winded and using fancy words to sound cool. This editor is just pissing in my friend’s Cheerios because he can.

“The repetition of “center” is annoying; but “seeking Earth’s mysterious center”… what is that supposed to be?”

Retyping this editor’s punctuation hurts my soul. Bruh, you call yourself an editor?

Have you been to the center of the earth? I haven’t. They say it’s made of molten nickel but nobody knows for sure. Antarctica might not exist for all I know. I’ve never been there and don’t know anyone who has. Thus it’s mysterious.

“Again, you don’t really say anything here…”

New game: every time this guy writes ‘really’ or ‘actually’ I have to do a shot of Jaeger.

Not really saying anything? It’s fucking poetry! That’s the point. Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven could have been:

Bruh, This bird flew in my house and it freaked me out.

But it wasn’t. He went on and on for pages about it. That’s what poetry is, using way too many words to explain something.

Though he’s right about reusing words. The whole point of poetry is being a cunning linguist while torturing the people reading it.

“Omit the first line, and you’ve actually got a good finish”

Takes shot of Jaeger

No she doesn’t. With or without the line it’s bad. It’s poetry! There are no rules! Write whatever you want however you want, just be sure to sound like a pretentious asshole while you do it! And she did that beautifully.

“My most fervent recommendation is for you to read the book, Writing Down the Bones (Goldberg). This book has done so much good for me, and helped me learn to write well.”

Hey, I’m writing the jokes here. Stop it. I don’t jump up and down at the end of the bed when your mom’s trying to work.

Hold on, I need to write a note to myself.

“Don’t ever read the book Writing Down the Bones…”

Bruh, you’re barely literate and you’re recommending the most basic writing book that every writer has heard of to my friend who’s published books. All because you didn’t care for her poem. You got a lot of nerve. No talent. But lotsa nerve.

My friend asked that all her work be removed from this nincompoop’s publication. Which I completely agree with. Maybe the editor had a bad day but if he’s reading this, you actually really owe my friend an apology.