I was talking on the phone with a friend yesterday, and I asked him if he'd read Robinson's Gilead. His answer: "I despise that book." Naturally I asked why, and he responded with something about Protestant sentimentality and then, with a rush of anger, he said, "Maybe it's just because I'm a Jew and I basically think Christians are murderers." And then, in the next angry breath, he told me I should write an essay about Robinson and explain what I think about her because he really needs to read it. And then he sent me an email saying that again.

Maybe I should write him this essay, but I don't know. I really don't know. At the moment, the thought of undertaking another prose odyssey makes me tired; more than tired: it makes me bone-weary. Within the past three years, I've written two complete books of prose, plus a number of unconnected literary and personal essays.What I do think is that I should be writing poems again. I just have this feeling, this prickling behind my sinuses, that I need to retire from prose, at least for a while.

This could all be chalked up to late summer exhaustion. But to tell the truth, I do not feel smart enough, or coherent enough, to explain the power of sweetness in fiction, to worm my ways through the literary mysteries of the white Protestant mind, to track down the discontinuities between a character and the authorial presence who lurks behind him. I'm daunted, and I'm tired.

Anyway, I have to edit a textbook and mow grass. I shouldn't even be wasting time imagining I could write anything, even something so desirable as a poem. Please understand that I don't say this so that you will feel obliged to leave a comment encouraging me to make time for my writing. I make all too much time to write. I make not enough time to earn a living. This is an unfortunate state of affairs, when it comes to paying for a trip to Montreal and buying a freezer pig.