In their poems “Who Runs America” and “Cell Phone,” Allen Ginsberg and Ernesto Cardenal both strive to raise awareness about environmental issues that most people don't know about or tend to ignore.

Ginsberg's subject matter revolves around the use of oil. He presents images of “oil brown smog” and “oil red dung colored smoke” that are deliberately designed to make us shudder. He asks us to picture the smog and think about the millions of cars, the millions of electrical lines, all the engines and pipelines and oil tankers and derricks that fill the world. Ginsberg wants us to be aware of these things, to think about them in a way we never have before, and to consider how they affect our environment and our lives. His portrait is vivid and effective.

Cardenal takes a different approach, but his message is similar. He begins by inviting us to think about how we mindlessly use our cell phones. They are part of our daily lives, but we know nothing about how they are made. We don't know, Cardenal tells us, that thousands of people in the Congo die ever year in efforts to obtain coltan, the material “used in cell phone condensers.” Little children work long hours to “extract the coltan” because they “fit into the tiny holes.” They make a mere twenty-five cents a day, and they die from inhaling coltan powder or from rock falls. We must remember this, Cardenal says, when we use our cell phones.