The Meeting with Dr. Christopher Merrill

Last Tuesday we, all MA freshmen plus a group of other second-year students of American Studies, hosted a very esteemed college professor in Iowa, who teaches and practices poetry and writing in different programs taught all over the U.S., Professor Dr. Christopher Merrill; a fun, descent, knowledgeable and warm person who modestly answered all the irrelevant, and of course relevant, questions posed by eager us! I said irrelevant due to the fact that he's from a different discipline and I said relevant because we did ask some questions on literature, which he seemed jolly to had been asked.

One interesting thing among his talks was that he mentioned American people are one highly hopeful population. They look forward no matter what. When we discussed over economic free fall, The Great Debt and two major wars which are the fruit of G.W.Bush's 8 years of presidency, Dr. Merry emphasized on the fact that it was ''hope'' which brought president Obama nearly 50 million votes, after his presidential campaign speech and specifically the very slogan of ''change''.

The other important issue we discussed was the reality that there seems to be no more content about Obama`s election in the U.S., or even as my American History professor Dr. Hosseini puts it: ''there are people in the northern states praying for Obama's assassination in the churches.'' There have been demonstrations against president Obama all over the country by people beguiled with discontent while observing this has been another lie hidden behind that very slogan of ''change''. On the other end, this should be reminded that Obama was the heir to what G.W.Bush had done with the world and, in smaller scale, the United States. After all, does that justify the recent dissatisfaction? Is it reason enough for one person to lie?

According to what Dr. Merrill said, America and American people are going through notably drastic times, people are afraid of losing their jobs, many capitalists are afraid of going bankrupt and generally the whole country is encountering an economical crisis. This puts a greater weight on people's shoulders like Dr. Merrill's, poets', writers' and people's who are at least a bit more sensitive than others, who know how to mirror it in their works of fiction or non-fiction, who know how to sympathize with others of the same pain, who know how to stand erect and build up history, each one touching it from a different outlook.