I submitted my poem "Spiritual Rain" to another poetry contest awhile ago, this time at poetry.com. I received a letter today which said, in part:

Dear Andrea,

After carefully reading your poem, our Selection Committee has certified your poem as a semi-finalist in our International Open Poetry Contest. Your poem will automatically be entered into the final competition held in June 2001. As a semi-finalist, you now have the excellent chance of winning one of 104 cash or gift prizes...

(yada yada...stuff about ordering the book called The Silence Within. Yada yada...)

Before going any further, Andrea, let me make one thing clear...your poem was selected for publication, and as a contest semi-finalist, on the basis of your unique talent and artistic vision.

(yada yada)

Andrea, you should be genuinely proud of your accomplishment. Of the thousands of poems we read each year, only a fraction can be published. We are pleased that "Spiritual Rain" will appropriately achieve the recognition that a national publication can give it.

(yada yada)

+++

Okay, now my questions are these:

Is this a big scam, where it makes it sound like you're a lucky semi-finalist, but in reality everyone is?

Why isn't this book in the local library? If they claim all these big bookstores sell it (which, in a part of the letter I omitted, it does say), why isn't it listed at amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com?

Does everyone get published, and they lie, claiming you have true talent, just to make you feel good?

Has anyone ever been published in this thing? It is an anthology put out by The International Library of Poetry. Hmm...it costs about fifty bucks for the book, and an additional twenty-five for a paragraph about yourself in it. Hmm...just wondering.

~Den-"is happy, but doesn't know if she should be"Kara