Also on the table in the room where I am writing is a pile of books which I have been reading intermittently. Most of them are works of fiction — novels and collections of stories — though now and then among them you’ll find a work of non-fiction (a biography of some person or other, or a memoir, or a treatise on spirituality, or prayer). I own very few books of poetry, though I do glance through them whenever I happen to come across them, and am in the mood for them. My own first published book was a collection of poems. Which is to say that I started out as a poet, I guess, even if I no longer am one.