Dear Lucinda,

We would be honored to publish The Favorite.  It’s wonderful.  In fact, it’s so wonderful that I hope you collect a dozen offers to publish and choose the one which will win you a hundred thousand fans, and make you become required reading for poetry classes and Road Scholars across the country.  Actually, that’s a half truth.  We’d be happy if it happened, but we hope you’ll come straight to us despite the likelihood that you could find a larger press with more sophisticated ways of getting the word out.  It’s not often that we find a poet who can make us laugh, wince, laugh again, and float meditatively into the bluest sky Missouri offers.  I’m still floating.

I’ll send a copy of our standard contract to you as soon as you respond.

Betsy