(This one’s dedicated to EJS.)

All month long, I have been sharing poems from contemporary poets. This last poem, “1981: Sprite Lost, Sprite Found” by Susan Terris, I found many moons ago in The Sun magazine. 

It tells the story of a mother’s deep love (and grief) and refusal to give up on her daughter. I have toted this poem around all these years because I love it so.

I’ve also loved The Sun magazine, and for this last National Poetry Month post, I thought I would tell you a little (light) story about me and the magazine. But first, the poem by Susan Terris. (The story about The Sun and me is below that.)

You need to take a moment after reading that one, so please do so before reading my little (light!) story here: 

I started reading The Sun magazine when a dear friend of mine joined The Sun staff back in the 1990s. She gave me my first subscription—and several more over the years—and later I bought my own. Published in Chapel Hill, this little magazine has a big heart and a stellar reputation. I relished the stories and poetry, and it boasts a great Readers Write section in which the magazine names a topic and readers write in their topic-related anecdotes and stories. The first time I sent in a submission to The Sun was around 2006 and was for Readers Write.

My submission was rejected.

In 2013, I tried again, this time with an essay. It was rejected.

Three years later, in 2016, I tried again with a short story. It was rejected. Then another. It was also rejected. Then another. Rejected. And another. Rejected.

In 2017, I submitted another short story, and when that was rejected, I moved on to poetry. I submitted three poems that year. They were rejected.

In 2018, I submitted—not all at once, but over the course of the year—eight poems. All of them were rejected.

In 2019, I submitted a short story. Rejected. I submitted five poems. Rejected. And then in late autumn of 2019, I threw a Hail Mary. I had a few more poems I had never submitted to The Sun, and I thought, well, they won’t have a chance to be rejected if they don’t ever leave my house.

In case you have not been counting, I submitted 24 pieces before my Hail Mary. It’s not hard to guess what happened to my Hail Mary batch: I got an email from The Sun. Every rejection comes with an email, and a rejection always starts out with “Thanks for sending us….”  This one was no different: “Thanks for sending us your work,” it said, and then went on, “We enjoyed reading all your poems, but we were particularly fond of ‘Inheritance.’ We’d like to publish it in The Sun.”

I was stunned. And grateful. My poem will appear in the May 2020 issue of The Sun.

Thank you, The Sun, for publishing so many wonderful poems, including this one from Susan Terris. I am beyond thrilled to have a poem of mine live among the other poems in your pages.

You can listen to Robert McCready recite Susan’s poem on his Evening Magic YouTube Channel here.

Thank you, blog readers, for celebrating National Poetry Month with me and coming along on this ride. We’ll do it all again next April.

May all of you be safe and well.

The poem featured in this blog was originally published in The Sun and is published here with permission from the author. You can learn more about Susan Terris here.

My poem, “Inheritance,” will be published in my forthcoming poetry collection, Trouble Can Be So Beautiful at the Beginning (winner of the Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry), due out in 2021 from Mercer University Press.

Photo by Utah Jack from Unsplash.com.