Ah, rejection letters. I sometimes wonder which is worse: preprinted form letters or cursory personal responses written by readers who show no sign of having asked themselves, "What's going on in this poem? What is the writer trying to do?" I have had poems castigated for being "too encoded" (what?) and "too self-absorbed" (about a piece that was obviously narrative fiction) and have even been told "don't be embarrassed to submit your work" (what?). Naturally I'd prefer to have readers like my poems and want to publish them. But I've submitted poems that I've later decided were bad or unfinished, and I understand that journal editors may have tastes that diverge from mine. So rejection per se is fine. What annoys me is rejection that only pretends to deal with the work at hand.

I'm on the editorial board of a poetry journal, so I have sympathy with editors. It's absolutely impossible to read a gargantuan stack of submissions with perfect care and sympathy. But resorting to these idiotic "personal" notes is useless and, for a self-doubting writer, downright destructive and cruel.

So when you're reading a student's creative work, ask those questions: "What's going on in this poem [or story or nonfiction piece]? What is the writer trying to do?" By and large, beginning writers aren't very cognizant of writing as a purposeful foray. The words just accrue on the page. By asking those initial questions, you open a door to a civil discourse about the piece. Now you can begin asking those great "what if" questions that can deal with anything from structural missteps to character development to punctuation and usage. The student is still in charge of the work, but you are offering insight into possibilities.

If a student is serious about wanting to be writer, she's going to get one of those stupid rejection letters some day. So teach her how to be a careful, considerate, focused critic of her own work. That way she has someone to depend on.