Rejection

Dear X,

If I am in time, I would ask you to delete unread
The draft I sent to you in haste.
It was a mistake, and your comments I dread.
I am sorry your time to waste.
I have spent my life in formal languages
And writing handouts for lazy students.
At the time I thought that my dull pages
Were more than a form of verbal flatulence.
I guess I’m too much a Leavisite,
To send to you such a load of shite.

This will absolve you from finding words so kind
To tell me that my work is total rubbish.
I wish I could say that I don’t mind
But rejection is an unwelcome, bitter dish.
A program may be elegant in algorithm
But where the Chomskian deep structures,
It does not scan, and has no metre or rhythm.
Syntax and logic, avoiding all the fractures
I guess I’m too much a Leavisite
To write such a pile of shite.

The writing of this piece of dross
Was, at least for me, quite cathartic.
But I don’t want to make you cross
And really don’t want to take the mick,
Out of serious poets and writers.
I realise now that I have no talent,
An atheist amongst the mitres.
The urge to write is gone, quite spent,
I guess I’m too much a Leavisite,
To publish such a steaming heap …

Note: I have added this as Leavis seems to be forgotten by many.
Frank Raymond Leavis was an influential British literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century, who changed the way literary criticism was taught and literary reviews were written. He taught and studied for nearly his entire life at Downing College, Cambridge. He wrote reviews that were extremely acerbic, although witty, and advocated a very small canon of serious 'literature and poetry'. He was probably the most influential and hated reviewer on both sides of the Atlantic for several decades. He regarded most, if not all, modern literature as rubbish and blamed the Victorians for introducing self-indulgent, emotional prose and verse.