Ill conceived, poorly written

This was the judgment of a reader at Knopf of a manuscript called “The Bell Jar,” submitted by one Sylvia Plath.

She's not the only writer of note to have received damning rejections from publishers early on. Sometimes early work might be bad, but more often it seems a case of painful subjectivity of judgment, or of publishers failing to recognise genius when it comes across their desk. It also draws attention to the difference between what's sellable and what's (eventually) great. The spirit and the machinery of literature are often at odds.

Here's a bunch more rejection letters at The Atlantic, including Vladimir Nabokov, Gertrude Stein, and Jack Kerouac.

Little stalk without wrinkle

Today I'm going to Melbourne to meet my small nephew, now three weeks old. I probably won't find Sylvia Plath's poem “Child” in a Hallmark card, but it has a truth and troubled joy about it that I find moving. It ends uneasily, but it has said something astonishing about childhood.

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new

Whose names you meditate ---
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.