"We Wish You Luck" and other Weapons of Mass "Declining"

Two emails in my inbox this morning had the subject-line :

Re: Poetry Submission, ---- --------

Those are the sort of emails that you read with the four (or is it forty?) chambers of your heart cramped into your mouth.

You find yourself at a fork in the road. One way (a snailtrail) leads to Congraturica ; the other (an autobahn) to Tryagainistan. Of course you know which way you're supposed to take, but often find yourself cruising helplessly down the other way...

The emails in question both decided to sleep facing the same place (that's a loose transation of a Yoruba proverb) - rejections both, one from SmallSpiralNotebook, the other from Stride Magazine. Other (very) recent rejection notes sitting in my inbox: Orbis, MIPOesias, 2GQ and Magma.

NB. I have had work previously published in Orbis 132 (2005) and Magma 35 (2006).

I'll end with an few words from BroodingPoet, whose blog I stumbled on this morning: "...Writing, more often than not, is about failure and fortitude. Countless talented students of writing will find happiness elsewhere. Countless young poets will send off their poems, expecting—as I once did—instantaneous praise. Few poets deserve such praise. Rather, success is built upon failures: the failures of ambition, the failures of luck, the failures of timing, and the failures of placement. For me, I've learned from those failures, and more, I've learned that, in truth, a rejection isn't a failure. It's just a rejection."