REJECTION LETTER

August 20, 2025 / John Grimmett

You say,

with lips pursed,
armed with degrees
from the highest prestige:

“This is the way art is made.”

But what you hold in your hand
is not light or color or sound
but a stand-in for what you think
that thing should be

because you’re too afraid to hold
what doesn’t belong to you,
what was never yours,
the thing you claim for yourself
because you’re not sure
why you’re here
without a need to tell me
why you should be
and how it should be made.

This, you call, your work in the world,
a work you’ve never owned
in a world you’ve never lived in
because — if you had —
you’d know you cannot capture light
(ask Flavin)
or color
(ask Frankenthaler;
see: other Fauvists)
or sound
(ask Samson Young
or Mahler
or Amy Beach)

You are not an artist at all.
You cannot tell me what I can be.

I know the difference;
so do the trees,
the subjects,
the major scale,
and — if you listen quietly —
the inner voice that terrorizes you
in solemn midnights
with cups of loneliness
and aspiration.

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