Tuesday, Tuesday, here you are again. But you're supposed to be a sunny one, and tonight T and I will stroll out to our first minor-league game of the season, and I hope we won't be cold.

I've been pondering a few things lately. Rejection, obviously . . . that sharpened thorn, always honed to stab us, just as we think we can't bear one more no: But also the accidental slide into confidence, when suddenly we realize that we're doing the work we're meant to do, and doing it well. It is difficult to undergo both of these sensations simultaneously. It is always easier to default to I guess my work stinks. Because how can a writer square a career's worth of rejection with the inner knowledge that both the work and the act of doing it are immensely valuable . . . maybe not to the world at large, but in some other, less easily defined way?

As far as public acknowledgment goes, I've been luckier than some and unluckier than others. Judges and readers are subjective: there is no other way to be, in the literary world. Writing isn't a race with a finish line. Of course there's apprentice work, unready work, and a good editor or judge can weed that out. But when that good judge ends up with five excellently made books and one prize, then the choice inevitably devolves to personal inclination.

I think a lot about these issues, not just in terms of my own work but also as regards the work I edit. I frequently deal with manuscripts that have won prizes but then come to me to be "fixed up" before publication. Sometimes that means catching a few typos and asking the author a couple of questions. Sometimes, however, it means serious rewriting . . . which is to say: the book that won the prize was not tagged because of its fine prose or prosody but because judges identified a strength that trumped fine prose or prosody. For those of us who focus deeply on language, this may feel like a painful irony: a creative writing prize given to a book with subpar creative writing . . . how is this a tolerable outcome? But what if the book tells a story that needs to be told? What if the judge has never seen anyone try to tell that story before? Things get complicated, up there in the judge's booth.

I've just finished teaching a manuscript class--a class where I always have to end by telling the participants that I cannot guarantee they'll ever be published. All I can do is offer them a set of entry points into their own creative engagement with the process of collecting poems. It's frustrating for them; it's frustrating for all of us; it will always be frustrating. The eminent poets I know personally still fume and sigh and second-guess themselves, still feel left out and overlooked, still wonder if it's all been a waste.

Easy to say them: Of course it hasn't been a waste. Harder to say the same to myself. But just as necessary.