Free Write This Down by Claudia Mills Page B

knowing that this was the day I might hear the news that my Cameron poems would be published in the most prestigious poetry magazine that there is.
    I try to tell myself, Okay, The New Yorker didn’t like my poems. Frankly, I don’t like their poems either. I knew it was a long shot, trying to publish rhyming love poems nowadays. Like Miniver Cheevy and Moonbeam, I was born too late.
    But the more I read over that one short line, the more it hurts. Couldn’t they have said something encouraging? Commented on my promise as a poet and suggested that I might consider branching out a bit and writing poems that don’t rhyme? Asked me to try them again with other material?
    I click on the file I sent them and read through my six rhyming Cameron poems, trying to imagine an editor sitting in a faraway New York City office coming upon them amid thousands of other poems sent in by other wannabe poets.
    Is Hunter right that they suck? Or is Hunter wrong?
    Did Cameron tell David he hated my poem? Or did Hunter make that up?
    Right now it feels like Hunter was right, about everything.
    I don’t plan to cry.
    But somehow that’s what I’m doing as I imagine the New Yorker editor reading my poor little rejected poems aloud to the guy sitting next to him, borrowing Hunter’s quavery falsetto voice, and the other guy laughing for a brief moment before cheerfully going on to reject the next poem, and the next poem, and the poem after that.

 
    13
    On Monday Ms. Archer hands back our personal essays.
    I get an A on mine. Maybe the A is partly because I had to put the Mrs. Whistlepuff essay aside at the last minute and start all over again, an A for effort. But it doesn’t really matter because I already sent my expanded Mrs. Whistlepuff essay to the Denver Post contest last night. I couldn’t sleep, thinking about Hunter’s meanness and the New Yorker rejection. So at two in the morning I slipped out of bed, turned on my computer, and did the deed.
    Kylee got an A on her essay, too. I don’t know what Cameron got on his. I do know he stuck it inside his journalism binder without even looking at it. (Ms. Archer hands them back to us facedown, to protect each student’s privacy from prying eyes—like mine.)
    â€œAll right, intrepid scholars,” Ms. Archer says. “Next up, we’ll be spending two weeks reading and writing reviews.”
    â€œReviews of what?” Tyler wants to know. “Video games?” he asks hopefully.
    â€œOf anything!” Ms. Archer replies. “Video games, books, films, plays, restaurants, shops, services. Anything where you think your opinion might be helpful to someone trying to decide whether to purchase or attend or engage with that thing.”
    As soon as she said “books,” I thought about the book I love best and would most want to tell the world about: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. But most people already know about that book. Shouldn’t the review be about something new ? I feel too shy to ask.
    â€œA review, say, of a book”—Ms. Archer must be reading my mind—“must be more than just a summary of the plot, though you do want to give the reader a sense of what the story is about, while avoiding spoilers that would destroy the reading experience. Above all, the reader wants your opinion about the plot, the characters, the theme, the writing style. But a review also needs to be more than just your opinion : I loved this, I hated that. Your opinion needs to be supported with details and examples. Why did you love this? Why did you hate that?”
    Tyler calls out another question. “What if you hate the whole thing?”
    Ms. Archer laughs. “It’s true that reviews make a stronger impression if they take a bold stance rather than being timid or wishy-washy. But you also want to be fair. Readers want to be able to trust your judgment as being impartial rather than