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Annie Dillard’s “How we spend our days” · The Daily Poem

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sean Johnson and today is Thursday, September 17th, 2026.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is by Annie Dillard.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's called How We Spend Our Days.
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  SPEAKER_00: Dillard died yesterday and if you are listening to The Daily Poem,
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  SPEAKER_00: the odds are good that you're already familiar with her and already mourning
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  SPEAKER_00: and remembering her fondly.
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  SPEAKER_00: My own first introduction to Dillard was Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and then And one of
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  SPEAKER_00: the things that always struck me about Dillard was the way she managed
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  SPEAKER_00: to appreciate what was common.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's valuable to find a writer who can teach you something like this
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  SPEAKER_00: because it seems like an essential virtue if you want to live happily or joyfully
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  SPEAKER_00: or rightly.
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  SPEAKER_00: The world is full of these small and even domestic and mundane wonders.
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  SPEAKER_00: And one of her great gifts and projects was to beautify those and bring them to our notice.
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  SPEAKER_00: In this poem, the small and beautiful wonder that she begins with is this kind of trite truism.
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  SPEAKER_00: Even cliches,
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  SPEAKER_00: she tells us,
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  SPEAKER_00: can be these commonplace treasures that we ought not to take for granted.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I hope she is satisfied now with the life that she has collected.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here's the poem, How We Spend Our Days.
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  SPEAKER_00: How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.
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  SPEAKER_00: A schedule defends from chaos and whim.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is a net for catching days.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
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  SPEAKER_00: Schedule is a mock-up of reason and order, willed, faked, and so brought into being.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is a lifeboat on which you find yourself decades later, still living.
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  SPEAKER_00: Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.
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  SPEAKER_00: This has been The Daily Poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
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  SPEAKER_00: And for supporting our show, we'll be back tomorrow with more poetry for you.
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  SPEAKER_00: Till then, for all of us at Goldberry Studios, I'm Sean Johnson wishing you happy reading.