BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Imagination and empathy are, perhaps, our last hope, said Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham during her address at Illinois Wesleyan University Founders’ Day Convocation on Wednesday.
The Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University, Graham lamented that in this lifetime, we are forced to imagine connections to places and even people. “To see what it is we are, to see what it is we have, and to see what it is we stand to lose, we have to use our imagination,” she said.
Graham challenged the audience, as members of a pivotal generation, to ask themselves if they will settle for imagination instead of reality – for viral posts of cute animals while the real creatures go extinct, or for a view of the ocean, knowing just below the picturesque surface the reefs are choked and toxic. “Is the world still the world if it is silent?” she asked.
For current generations, said Graham, imagination is no longer isolated to pure invention. It is now a vital connection in a world in which we are isolated from ourselves and from one another. “Imagination is the only instrument we have in which we are brought to actual fact – to see in the face of another – the there that is there,” she said, noting we must rely on our imaginations to break down the barriers of an instant society.