Hoping for Lots of Reviews for “Is Renewable Really Doable”

Last evening, waiting at a restaurant bar for the remainder of my party to arrive, I happened to run into professional poet Richard Jerrette. He told me about his recent cycle of poems, “Beso The Donkey,” and we briefly commiserated over our martinis (mine, technically a Gibson, with an onion) about how difficult it is to get important industry figures to review one’s writing.

I told him about my experience with my first book, how I had spent several 12-hour days identifying and contacting the most obvious people: editors of magazines and websites on energy and environmentalism, as well as the world’s top names in the space that I deemed relevant: Al Gore, Oprha Winfrey, Jon Stewart, etc.  My results weren’t completely negative, but I didn’t hit the home-run for which I had hoped.  

When my people finally arrived, Richard and I shook hands, traded business cards, and parted company. I told him I’d send him a copy of “Is Renewable Really Doable?” when I got my first shipment.   

Later that night, I read that W.S. Merwin has written this about “Beso”:

The glimpse of Beso took me completely by surprise. Every real donkey, of course, is a complete original, a unique character, and is born knowing everyone present at that moment, and what to expect of each of them. Beso is a real donkey, even to the author’s astonish-ment at his ever having appeared at all. This is a donkey like no other, and the poems he summoned are our singular good fortune.

—W.S. Merwin (Poet Laureate and winner of the 2009 Pulitzer)

You’re a poet, W.S Merwin writes something nice about you, and you bemoan your luck in generating reviews? Sorry, Richard; it’s hard to feel too much sympathy there.  Seriously.  Congratulations, and keep up the good work.  Maybe I’ll have such luck with “Is Renewable Really Doable?”