On Rejection and Mediation

A guest post by Nate Fisher

I can't and won't ever claim to have some enormous, groundbreaking outlook regarding rejection as I've only worked a short while in the world of editing and the literary journal, but I've come to a point in thought that addresses some of what Jeff Shotts says about the characteristics of "authority" in the language of rejection. As both writer and editor (pretty much synonymous anymore, right?), I refuse to claim an authority in the sense of pushing a writer's piece back across the table to him or her as if it's an offer that I'm declining. I believe instead that if one is to see writing as a shared tradition and lifelong apprenticeship like any other art, one has to revise the language of rejection to reflect a concept of mediation, as this term encompasses the entire procedure of contemplation, consideration, reconciliation, and decision that demonstrates a great deal more humanity and dimension than a binary of "accept/reject."

When I sit down as editor, a piece presented to me is, in itself, representative of the writer saying, "My work belongs here, and in this way." This state of lower immediacy that artist-laborers often finds themselves in is something like a tangle of spontaneous impulses and feelings that demand immediate gratification. While neither a good nor bad thing, this immediacy tends to be very short-lived. A reader who works to discover a longer lifeline (though one may not, in the end exist) is working to mediate. For example, in mediation of a piece, an editor might pose this question: if the author were to hold an eventual wake, funeral service, and burial of the work in question, could he or she deliver the eulogy, saying, in all honesty, "This poem/story was an individual"? Or would he or she have to admit, however painfully, "This poem/story was a particular"? Though I admit that this is a very general way to think of craft and that there must be, of course, a much more in-depth evaluation and reading of any work involved, I believe the approach re-purposes the potential negative energy of the rejection. Instead, it honors an inclusive artistic community that reinforces tradition rather than the politicized flocks of exclusivity that, raven-like, tear the life out of some journals.

 Though calling rejection by a different name doesn't eliminate all of the issues that a mediation might bring with it, I do think it presents the concept of "we can't accept your work" in a more productive and generative light. A well-managed, content-fantastic, and historically relevant literary journal gathers together a congregation of individual pieces of literature, high-quality work that can communicate across a shared tradition of readership. An editorial board that is searching relentlessly for content that provides this sense of higher immediacy won't settle for work that doesn't quite make a complete, unconditional commitment to craftsmanship. But what's the harm in thinking of the editor as a builder of bridges, one who establishes empathetic dialogue across the tradition, even if it ends in a “no way” type of rejection? What's the harm of trying to circumvent the writer's sense that he or she is submitting work to a crossing guard or a doorman? I mean, in mediation, at least the doormen take off their coats.

Nate Fisher is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Idaho. A teacher and a journalist, he has worked on the editorial boards of several literary journals, including Sou'wester and the Beloit Poetry Journal.