Annie Dillard

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• Annie Dillard

Darryl Yip
Alisa Wong
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• "This Ellery cost me twenty-five cents. He is a
  deep red-orange, darker than most goldfish. He
  steers short distances mainly with his slender
  red lateral fins they seem to provide impetus
  for going backward, up, or down. It took me a few
  days to discover his central fins they are
  completely transparent and all but
  invisible--dream fins. He also has a short anal
  fin, and a tail that is deeply notched and
  perfectly transparent at the two tapered tips. He
  can extend his mouth, so it look like a length of
  pipe he can shift the angle of his eyes in his
  head so he can look before and behind himself,
  instead of simply out of one side. His belly,
  what there is of it, is white ventrally, and a
  partch of this white extends up his sides--the
  variegated Ellery. When he opens his gill slits
  he shows a thin crescent of silver where the flap
  overlapped--as though all his brightness were
  sunburn. For this creature, as I said, I paid
  twenty-five cents. I had never bought an animal
  before. It was very simple I went to a store in
  Roanoke called "Wet Pets" I handed the man a
  quarter, and he handed me a knotted plastic bag
  bouncing with water in which a green plant
  floated and the goldfish swam. This fish, two
  bits' worth, has a coiled gut, a spine radiating
  fine bones, and a brain. Just before I sprinkle
  food flakes into his bowl, I rap three times on
  the bowl's edge now he is conditioned, and swims
  to the surface when I rap. And, he has a heart."
• Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

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BIO

• born Meta Ann Doak on April 30, 1945
• raised as a Presbyterian and went to
  fundamentalist summer camp
• interest in poetry began in high school
• attended Hollins College where she met her
  future husband, teacher Richard Dillard
• turned to Catholicism after reading the
  theological works of C.S. Lewis

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An American Childhood(1987)

• Collected rocks

Bird watched
Played detective
Read lots of books (favorite book The Field
Book of Ponds and Streams)
And still I break up through the skin of
awareness a thousand times a day, as dolphins
burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and
dive.
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• continued
• near-fatal experience of pneumonia in 1971
• after recovery she spent a year at Tinker Creek
• won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for Tinker
  Creek
• rumored to read over 100 books per year

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THEMES

• relationship among nature, humanity, and God

• Sense of place
• Interconnectedness
• Stewardship

beauty vs cruelty Intimacy vs horror
extravagance vs waste
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• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
• (1974)
• highly influenced by her experience with
  pneumonia
• spent a year in seclusion at Tinker Creek
• wrote in a journal everyday
• "Its all a matter of keeping my eyes open."

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NPR Interview with Annie Dillard

• http//www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story
  Id4270641