Why every rejection is sediment — and how to survive the dark water between poems. The professional life of a poet is a study in surfaces. When you browse the spine-out collections in a quiet bookshop or trace the cover of a literary magazine on a coffee table, you are observing only the light that has been caught and held. Beneath it lies the sediment — the years of silence, the rejection slips that pile like drifted snow, the lightless cold of the submission queue. For ever