Ours is an era of excess. By ours I mean you and I, who are meeting over these words. We have too much of everything but empty time: too much food, too many clothes, too much stuff, too many choices. In too much reading matter, we flail not to drown.

This glut’s a nice problem to have, some might grunt. Granted, but a problem is a problem. How do we divvy our time among so many delectable alternatives? Half a dozen readers yesterday recommended readings. Bless you! The suggestions were all apt, amplifying or countering my thoughts. Must-reads: but when? Enjoying one article I subscribed to its online source. Now I wish I hadn’t. This new arrival is too good. Its offerings elbow aside others I’d intended to scan at least.

When I was a boy, sixty years ago, we didn’t feel this imbalance. The publications we “took” – quaint-sounding verb – we tended to read through, often repeatedly. In our house we took Life rather than Look, Time rather than Newsweek, the Tribune and Times, but no tabloid, God forfend. Titles we didn’t subscribe to were not incessantly dangling their delights like hookers. We’d receive their subscription solicitations maybe twice a year, not twice a day.

The Internet changed that. Online we were drenched by a gush of voices that would not be stanched. Voices we’d invited referred us to others, as our contact information was peddled and repeddled. During our recent tragic election, I got to know congressional and gubernatorial candidates from Nebraska, Florida, and Montana on a first-name basis, to cite just a few, to whom, months after, I’m still endeavoring to say goodbye. Not since I visited Haiti a lifetime ago have I felt so importuned by urgent suppliants, who seek just a piece of me, the tiniest piece, until I have no pieces left.

Coping with a flood isn’t easy. Our pestered intellects develop attention deficit syndrome as we struggle to stay sane. The introduction and spread of this diagnosis coincides with the information explosion triggered by the Internet. Also characteristic of our moment is a gnawing sense of ignorance about what’s going on. The more we know, the less it seems, as our stack of must-reads heaps and teeters, on its way to deletion.

I contribute to this problem in my small way by sending you these billets doux every day. What a heartless gift! Wouldn’t once a week, even once a month, be enough? Yet if you allow me this intimacy, my loneliness cannot resist. You could always delete, say I cheerfully, praying you don’t.

Drastic solutions – abjuring all communications – solve little for long. Few prefer being hermits: we yearn to converse – and to do that we need to know “what’s going on.” Some voices I have “all the time in the world for” – some of yours. Why else live, if not to commune with those we love?

My frantic response to this overload is to read – and discard – rapidly, even rudely, in my rush. I don’t “do justice” to much of what I’m sent, I miss points tucked into lengthy emails and “read” news faster than I can read. As a writer (envisioning myself as a reader), I aim for an irresistible concision, every sentence gripping, so I hold you tight. Knowing what short-shrift I’d make of a windbag, I shy from a similar fate.

I also read books. Print on a page forestalls scrolling. One must decode and assess what’s being said. Poetry especially slams the door on our raucous ruckus. One doesn’t need pricey earphones to cancel noise, one needs a poem.