Annie Dillard(1945- )wrote in the opening paragraph of the prologue to her autobiography,1 that when all her memories had gone from her brain she would have topology: “the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that.” I suppose to check this theory, this idea, out you’d have to do a bit of a study of people with advanced senile dementia. In 1992 I first came across the name Annie Dillard at the front of a book of poetry by Roger White: Occasions of Grace. It was a book I had written the introduction to, as requested by the author. Until two days ago some 14 years later, the name Annie Dillard remained just that, a name. But thanks to a casual encounter with Dillard’s autobiography at northern Tasmania’s best library and a few clicks on ‘Annie Dillard’ internet sites this American writer became a more familiar quotient.-Ron Price with thanks to 1Annie Dillard, An American Childhood, Harper and Row, NY, 1987.
You must visit the page
everyday and reassert
your mastery over the lines,
the marks, the small pieces
of paper, the thoughts, words,
all the books and articles,
but not too seriously. Take
a leaf out of the Aussi psyche
and go lightly and laugh
into the land as you read
and write and read and write
day after day with the years.
You temper that fanaticism
of youth and draw, now,
on all your experiences
and especially those
mysterious dispensations
of an ever watchful Providence
and His sweet-scented streams,
blended with the best of what
is thought and said now and
in the long history of mankind
and all the stuff of nature.
Democratic Dilemmas and Divine Inspiration examines the significance or relevance of the idea that the U.S. Constitution was, as many believe, divinely inspired. How much did that belief matter to founders of the nation and how much does it matter no
Democratic Dilemmas and Divine Inspiration examines the significance or relevance of the idea that the U.S. Constitution was, as many believe, divinely inspired. How much did that belief matter to founders of the nation and how much does it matter no
Democratic Dilemmas and Divine Inspiration examines the significance or relevance of the idea that the U.S. Constitution was, as many believe, divinely inspired. How much did that belief matter to founders of the nation and how much does it matter no
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