Bill McKibben's 2008 visit to Oklahoma Christian University

This post is a little different from the rest of my blog. I'm very proud to say that in October, my school (Oklahoma Christian University), was honored to have a visit from a noted author, Bill McKibben. McKibben isn't a poet, but his writing has been very influential in trying to heal the environmental crisis that America has had a hand in creating. Read on for more information.

Oklahoma Christian University—The Oklahoma Christian University campus got a timely wake-up call from author Bill McKibben, a noted environmentalist writer and activist whose Oct. 3 visit changed the way OC students think about the environment. Each year, the McBride Lectureship Series invites a prominent author to the OC Campus to give a speech, answer questions and sign books. This year’s keynote speaker was Bill McKibben, the author of the 2007 bestseller Deep Economy. McKibben’s speech served to educate and motivate the audience about the current environmental crisis. Topics of concern included global warming, the fuel crisis and the decline of local economies. McKibben encouraged his listeners to fight for change on a national level.

Jaclyn Kaissling, a 20-year-old English major, found McKibben’s discussion of local economy especially relevant.

“I think what Bill McKibben said that spoke to me the most was how we’re losing our sense of community,” she said. “Technology has really come in and taken over so that we don’t have that anymore.”

McKibben’s speech advocated a return to farmer’s markets to avoid the high gas usage associated with flying in produce from all over the world. He suggested that a focus on the local economy would lead to a more closely-knit sense of community.

Since then, OC students have expressed greater interest in farmer’s markets. McKibben brought up the idea of OC implementing a vegetable garden, which OC students could use to connect with Tealridge residents through a sense of common accomplishment. Asked about the possibility, SGA secretary Abigail Townsend said “Right now we’re trying to find a good place we could put the garden, since there’s going to be something else built in the spot Bill McKibben mentioned. We hope to make it happen.”

Another key feature of McKibben’s speech was his emphasis on the fact that global warming is happening sooner than scientists expected, and it is important that the United States act now. McKibben provided frightening examples of a world in turmoil to illustrate his point, and he reminded his audience that no other country is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the United States. When asked by concerned audience members what each person could do to stop global warming, McKibben emphasized the importance of symbolic action as a way to spread awareness and let the leaders of the country know that its people demand change.

McKibben’s message had a great impact on senior English/Writing major Whitney Lenevue. “I bought two of his books,” she said. “I knew global warming was a big deal, and I knew it was approaching, but I didn’t know any of the statistics and I didn’t know any of the facts. I’ve actually told my whole family, and I’ve started being more conscious of things.” Lenevue is one of many students who are becoming more environmentally proactive after McKibben’s speech.

John Barker, another English major with plans for law school, felt similarly affected: “It made me reevaluate my personal responsibility to the environment as well as my responsibility as a participant in the democratic process.”

My Father's Love Letters by Yusef Komunyakaa

Last week's poem was a little dark in tone, and this one is definitely dark as well. It's a treasure I recently discovered, but I've known about the author for a long time. Yusef Komunyakaa is an American poet best known for his poem about the Vietnam war memorial, "Facing It." Today, however, I'm featuring a slightly lesser-known poem of his that's just as powerful.

My Father's Love Letters

On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax
After coming home from the mill,
& ask me to write a letter to my mother
Who sent postcards of desert flowers
Taller than men. He would beg,
Promising to never beat her
Again. Somehow I was happy
She had gone, & sometimes wanted
To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou
Williams' "Polka Dots & Moonbeams"
Never made the swelling go down.
His carpenter's apron always bulged
With old nails, a claw hammer
Looped at his side & extension cords
Coiled around his feet.
Words rolled from under the pressure
Of my ballpoint: Love,
Baby, Honey, Please.
We sat in the quiet brutality
Of voltage meters & pipe threaders,
Lost between sentences . . .
The gleam of a five-pound wedge
On the concrete floor
Pulled a sunset
Through the doorway of his toolshed.
I wondered if she laughed
& held them over a gas burner.
My father could only sign
His name, but he'd look at blueprints
& say how many bricks
Formed each wall. This man,
Who stole roses & hyacinth
For his yard, would stand there
With eyes closed & fists balled,
Laboring over a simple word, almost
Redeemed by what he tried to say.

Many people's first experience with love is not a positive, "functional" one (when it comes to love and family, is there really such a thing as functional anyway?). Interestingly enough, the reader sees the destructive, failed love story between two people--the father and mother--through the emotionally confused eyes of the child. This adds a new complication the story. It is not just about a man and a woman's abusive relationship. It is about how that relationship looks through the eyes of their child, caught in between. It is about the strange, destructive love so many children watch with confusion and torn emotions.

The love in this poem is brutal, dysfunctional, and yet somehow tender: the imagery of sunsets and flowers is very much at odds with the "quiet brutality" of both the speaker's father and the room in which he or she writes. What does all this warring imagery accomplish? The poem expresses that fearful push and pull of love between something violent and destructive and something tender and almost redemptive.

The last three lines hit a very personal chord with me. The speaker describes his father's clumsy effort to find the right words and overcome his own illiteracy in a way that echoes a larger theme we can all relate to: the aching difficulty of trying to express our own emotions in words. The father's lack of literacy or eloquence only highlights a difficulty of expression present in even the most well-read.

I hope you love this poem half as much as I do. Take a look at another "love" poem; this one is ambiguous and confuses me a little, which I think goes very well with this week's theme. Read for yourself and discover what you think is the meaning behind Always Pity.