Poetry and artwork - Henry Denander

The SASE


On eBay I bought a self-addressed and 
stamped envelope that the poet Charles Bukowski 
sent to Chiron Review in the 80’s.

This is the system, you send poems to a 
magazine or a publisher and if they like them 
they will use the SASE to reply to you. 

More likely they will not use your poems and 
return them in the SASE with a brief standard note 
telling so.

Many poets have written about how they received 
their first rejection letter or how they have their 
drawers full of rejection slips.

Even Bukowski got rejection slips. In the early days.

I have framed the Bukowski envelope and 
it looks nice on my wall. 

It’s a nice conversation piece; when someone asks 
about it I tell them the story of how it works and also, 
sort of by the way, 
I tell them that Chiron Review is 
actually the magazine where I had my 
first poem published.

And I don’t mention any of my 
rejection letters.
 

 

 

Published in Weeks Like This, 2005