Sometimes I feel like a fraud, and I have to get used to that.
Imposter syndrome might be something ubiquitous, but to me, it feels like I am the only one, especially after the tenth rejection letter in a row while struggling with a difficult revision. But I can’t let it get me down.
Ultimately, I understand a lot of poems in these first batches were not ready or were not fits for journals. Some were nice poems, but not poems journals publish. They’re the type of poems that live sandwiched between “good” poems in a collection. The thing is, I like those types of poems. I enjoy writing those types of poems. I feel like people like reading those types of poems. But journals do not want to publish them.
So either I am destined to be a homeless, self-publishing poet, an imposter, or I grow to be a publishing poet. Maybe I am all three.
I never wanted to be a poet, but it seems to be choosing me. In my teens, I wanted to be a singer-songwriter in coffee shops who might one day write a song for myself or someone else that would make it. When that door slammed, and I became an English teacher, I thought I would write short stories and maybe a novel. But I never had the courage to send out my short stories. I found I started several stories, outlined ideas for a lot more, but I never finished them. I have one that I know exactly where I want it to go, but twelve years later, it is still just 75% complete.
But turning 50 changed everything. I feared being George Gray. Instead of stories, I started writing lyrics again—not that I ever stopped—but they were coming to me faster, stronger, and feeling more poem-like. So I began trying to write poems and sending them out. At least I am not George Gray anymore.
But I do feel like a fraud. Am I really a poet? Do I have what it takes? Really, though, my deepest fear is that no one will want to publish what I write. So the imposter voice gets louder every time I get that rejection letter.
The first few powered me to take a leap. I could see it in my drafts. I was honing in on my craft, getting better. Now, the voice seems to be winning, smashing me under its feet like I am a bug. I don’t know how to recover.
I guess I do, though, as I keep on writing and revising, wrestling with the revision. Trying to force poems I do like, but I am writing something. If I keep putting words to a blank page, which I have always loved doing, one day it might work. It might not be a song that gets to number one with a bullet, but it could be a quiet little poem in a small literary journal that says: you did it; you don’t have to fear being George Gray anymore.
The rejection letters make it feel like an unscalable mountain, but I have to keep trying.
I will also share one of those rejected poems, and rightly so. It is not a journal poem.
MISSISSIPPI FLIGHT
She hears a call from the distant West,
stirring a longing long put to rest.
Will the willows and fireflies remain
as the fantasy is unspooled?
In the wind—
a fever from the Colorado sky.
In her breath—
the freedom of the Mississippi flight.
Fantasy becomes real, no longer a fairytale—
to feel the prairie dirt turn to rocky ground,
longing to hear the silence
of newly fallen snow.
(C) 2026 Kenny Norton
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