Abe+Musselman

Poetry is the silent voice that is heard everywhere inside of us

Homework 3/10/11 A tiger walks down under the new bridge Kanye West is a good rap artist right? Do you think that Taahir can see again? A problem with the Microsoft CD The banjo player sat at the TV

//**__A Sonnet about Reality TV__**//

The banjo player sits at the TV The newest craze around on channel 9 They’re back because some losers you do see Weren’t big enough to come in first and shine The ice road truckers couldn’t seem to get To where they wanted to without a hitch Three other guys are painting a Corvette They’ll fix it up and sell it to get rich The banjo player sits at the TV Just watching two men argue over cake Give us a racial slur if you will please I am the boss it’s your job, yours, to bake If this man is reality then I’ll Be well content to turn it off a while

__**Ode to Tariq Trotter**__

You don't ask for much these days Just an ear to listen Hidden in the shadows of the plastic MC's who don't have the skill to tap to their own beat or the wit to make you think or even to keep their focus for a line But you sit atop the mic Speaking to whoever's listening Your words the Seed Growing through the cracks In our expectations Each song's it's own thesis Jay-Z's got problems and Kanye's cliché <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">No, you don't b***h or whine**
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">Because you get your way **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">Not the airway on the radio **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">Not the right of way in the mainstream **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">But your music carves it's way through **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">the hearts of the rebels **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">The ones who make a difference **

__I Was Raised By__
 * I was raised by**
 * a backpack carrying**
 * moustache sporting**
 * minivan driving**
 * historical family trip**
 * "20 minutes to Gettysburg"**
 * Kind of dad**


 * A semi-salsa dancing**
 * Spanish-speaking**
 * No rated-R movies**
 * "You won't drive til you're 30"**
 * Kind of mom**


 * Some soccer-playing**
 * rule breaking**
 * ball shorts wearing**
 * "peace out bull"**
 * Type of friends**


 * Some iTunes spending**
 * Jersey-loving**
 * "Your cousins are next-door"**
 * Type of aunts**


 * Some house-building**
 * English teaching**
 * Ex missionary**
 * World traveling**
 * Virtuosic piano**
 * "Call from Fern Rock"**
 * Type of parents**


 * Robert Frost:**


 * __An Old Man's Winter Night__**


 * All out of doors looked darkly in at him **
 * Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, **
 * That gathers on the pane in empty rooms. **
 * What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze **
 * Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand. **
 * What kept him from remembering what it was **
 * That brought him to that creaking room was age. **
 * He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss. **
 * And having scared the cellar under him **
 * In clomping there, he scared it once again **
 * In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night, **
 * Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar **
 * Of trees and crack of branches, common things, **
 * But nothing so like beating on a box. **
 * A light he was to no one but himself **
 * Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what, **
 * A quiet light, and then not even that. **
 * He consigned to the moon, such as she was, **
 * So late-arising, to the broken moon **
 * As better than the sun in any case **
 * For such a charge, his snow upon the roof, **
 * His icicles along the wall to keep; **
 * And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt **
 * Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted, **
 * And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept. **
 * One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house, **
 * A farm, a countryside, or if he can, **
 * It's thus he does it of a winter night. **


 * Robert Frost conveys the confusion and terror of an old man alone in his house by personifying the house that he lives in. He describes the doors as looking at him, and watching him. The old man begins to grow afraid and grabs a lamp, eventually stomping his feet to scare away whatever is lurking in his house.**
 * A major part of establishing this atmosphere is the description of the sounds that surround him. Everything that is in the "outer night", which Frost describes as "trees, and crack of branches, common things", frightens the old man and makes him more paranoid. Frost asks a question on one line, then hastily answers it to create a rushed panic.**


 * __Fire and Ice__**
 * Some say the world will end in fire, **
 * Some say in ice. **
 * From what I’ve tasted of desire **
 * I hold with those who favor fire. **
 * But if it had to perish twice, **
 * I think I know enough of hate **
 * To say that for destruction ice **
 * Is also great, **
 * And would suffice. **


 * In //Fire and Ice//, Robert Frost uses two commonly known opposites to show the two most destructive emotions of humans. Fire symbolizes desire, and how every human is after something. Frost believes that this is greater than hatred, symbolized by ice, but only barely. These two things, he writes, will bring about the end of humanity. **
 * Many have speculated that the nine lines of this poem are symbolic of the nine circles of Hell, as described in Dante’s //Inferno//. Punishments that involve fire and ice are shown repeatedly in the epic poem. This poem is about emotion, and the poem makes a point of explaining that humans allow their emotions to take control and influence their decisions. In Dante’s //Inferno//, the prisoners of Hell are there because of the decisions that their emotions led them to make. Frost writes his poem like this to show the parallel between the destruction of Earth and the Hell in the Bible. The destructive power of human emotion is on the same level as the seven sins of Scripture, and our decisions will bring about the end of the world. **


 * __The Mountain__**
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;">The mountain held the town as in a shadow **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> I saw so much before I slept there once: **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> I noticed that I missed stars in the west, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Where its black body cut into the sky. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Behind which I was sheltered from a wind. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> And yet between the town and it I found, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> When I walked forth at dawn to see new things, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Were fields, a river, and beyond, more fields. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> The river at the time was fallen away, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> And made a widespread brawl on cobble-stones; **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> But the signs showed what it had done in spring; **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Good grass-land gullied out, and in the grass **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Ridges of sand, and driftwood stripped of bark. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> I crossed the river and swung round the mountain. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> And there I met a man who moved so slow **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> With white-faced oxen in a heavy cart, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> It seemed no hand to stop him altogether. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "What town is this?" I asked. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "This? Lunenburg." **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Then I was wrong: the town of my sojourn, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Beyond the bridge, was not that of the mountain, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> But only felt at night its shadowy presence. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "Where is your village? Very far from here?" **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "There is no village--only scattered farms. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> We were but sixty voters last election. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> We can't in nature grow to many more: **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> That thing takes all the room!" He moved his goad. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> The mountain stood there to be pointed at. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Pasture ran up the side a little way, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> And then there was a wall of trees with trunks: **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> After that only tops of trees, and cliffs **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Imperfectly concealed among the leaves. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> A dry ravine emerged from under boughs **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Into the pasture. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "That looks like a path. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Is that the way to reach the top from here?-- **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Not for this morning, but some other time: **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> I must be getting back to breakfast now." **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "I don't advise your trying from this side. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> There is no proper path, but those that have **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Been up, I understand, have climbed from Ladd's. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> That's five miles back. You can't mistake the place: **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> They logged it there last winter some way up. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> I'd take you, but I'm bound the other way." **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "You've never climbed it?" **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "I've been on the sides **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Deer-hunting and trout-fishing. There's a brook **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> That starts up on it somewhere--I've heard say **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Right on the top, tip-top--a curious thing. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> But what would interest you about the brook, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> It's always cold in summer, warm in winter. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> One of the great sights going is to see **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> It steam in winter like an ox's breath, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Until the bushes all along its banks **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Are inch-deep with the frosty spines and bristles-- **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> You know the kind. Then let the sun shine on it!" **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "There ought to be a view around the world **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> From such a mountain--if it isn't wooded **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Clear to the top." I saw through leafy screens **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Great granite terraces in sun and shadow, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Shelves one could rest a knee on getting up-- **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> With depths behind him sheer a hundred feet; **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Or turn and sit on and look out and down, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> With little ferns in crevices at his elbow. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "As to that I can't say. But there's the spring, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Right on the summit, almost like a fountain. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> That ought to be worth seeing." **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "If it's there. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> You never saw it?" **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "I guess there's no doubt **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> About its being there. I never saw it. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> It may not be right on the very top: **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> It wouldn't have to be a long way down **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> To have some head of water from above, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> And a good distance down might not be noticed **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> By anyone who'd come a long way up. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> One time I asked a fellow climbing it **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> To look and tell me later how it was." **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "What did he say?" **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "He said there was a lake **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Somewhere in Ireland on a mountain top." **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "But a lake's different. What about the spring?" **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "He never got up high enough to see. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> That's why I don't advise your trying this side. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> He tried this side. I've always meant to go **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> And look myself, but you know how it is: **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> It doesn't seem so much to climb a mountain **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> You've worked around the foot of all your life. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> What would I do? Go in my overalls, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> With a big stick, the same as when the cows **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Haven't come down to the bars at milking time? **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Or with a shotgun for a stray black bear? **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> 'Twouldn't seem real to climb for climbing it." **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "I shouldn't climb it if I didn't want to-- **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Not for the sake of climbing. What's its name?" **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "We call it Hor: I don't know if that's right." **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "Can one walk around it? Would it be too far?" **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "You can drive round and keep in Lunenburg, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> But it's as much as ever you can do, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> The boundary lines keep in so close to it. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Hor is the township, and the township's Hor-- **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> And a few houses sprinkled round the foot, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Like boulders broken off the upper cliff, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Rolled out a little farther than the rest." **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "Warm in December, cold in June, you say?" **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "I don't suppose the water's changed at all. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> You and I know enough to know it's warm **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Compared with cold, and cold compared with warm. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> But all the fun's in how you say a thing." **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "You've lived here all your life?" **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> "Ever since Hor **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Was no bigger than a" What, I did not hear. **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> He drew the oxen toward him with light touches **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Of his slim goad on nose and offside flank, **
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> Gave them their marching orders and was moving. **


 * Robert Frost’s poem //The Mountain// paints a majestic image of a village with a giant in its midst by its density and length. The poem itself is like a mountain. The lines are all very long and close together, and the poem is of titanic length. Reading a poem like this and trying to interpret it can be, in it’s own way, like climbing a mountain. Frost also uses vivid, flowing description, often entire lines, of the mountainside. These lines are presented like individual features of the mountain that is the poem, each adding to the majestic picture that Frost paints.**
 * //The Mountain// is told from the point-of-view of a traveler who is visiting a town overshadowed by a huge mountain. He is far from home, and has crossed into another county of New England. One night, he decides to take a walk and runs into an old man pushing an oxcart. The two men discuss the Mountain and how the village relies on it. The man with the oxcart tries to convince the traveler to climb the mountain, promising a spectacular reward is waiting at the top. Frost uses this challenge as an analogy for motivation in life.**

//Blue// By Abe Musselman

Stretching to the far corners of the earth Connecting one to another new world

20,000 Leagues A submarine into the abyss The pitch-black caverns that Housed the unknown Hidden behind the rocks But watching

Crashing upon those who dared Drowning out the shouting

Deeper Wonderful creature disfigured In the dark, a sole light Evolved to guide it Just like us

Destroying stem-cell research Wiping out abortion clinics

The Floor Sand Salt Sea

Purging the warring nations Washing away the borders

<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">My poems, as with my essays, begin with a few lines that I think of immediately when I hear the prompt. From there, I will build around these lines, adding rhymes and making sure it stays in meter. However, most of my poems are free verse and half stream-of-consciousness. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> The //Ode to Tariq Trotter// was inspired by the song playing at the time I wrote it. I had been listening heavily to the Roots all day and marveling at how they were able to craft what I considered to be thesis papers and make them sound like a rap. The opening line is the first line of the chorus from their most popular song “The Seed 2.0”. This seemed appropriate because, while I consider them to be extremely talented, they are not recognized on the same scale as many other (lesser) hip-hop artists. I went on to elaborate about the disparities between them and “the plastic MC’s”. The “tap to their own beat” line was a crack at sampling, upon which the Roots tend to frown, and the “keep their focus for a line” line was inspired by a lengthy YouTube comment on a Lil Wayne video. A later line nodded again at the “Seed”, this time using a metaphor that showed how I feel they have made their impact in the music industry. The last few lines about Kanye and Jay-Z (I got 99 problems and a b *h ain’t one) were added after I had written a rough draft of the poem because it seemed necessary to include examples of the unoriginal, less intellectual artists against which I was contrasting the Roots. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;">I had already had the idea of writing a song about reality TV for my band to play, and I figured I could do some preliminary work on that song with the sonnet assignment.//A Sonnet About Reality TV// was originally a line from a previous homework assignment inspired by the world’s fastest banjo player. I decided to expand upon this line because a banjo player is exactly the kind of gimmicky, cheap story that would make reality TV gold. Keeping the lines in iambic pentameter proved to be a challenge, and I found myself adding unnecessary words to keep to the syllable count. // Blue // was an idea that I came up with during a conversation about 2012. In the poem, a group of explorers descend deeper and deeper into the ocean while the world above them is destroyed by it. After each stanza is a two-line part that shows the destruction above in a way that symbolizes, or at least resembles, the longer stanza before it. For example, the first two-line stanza reads "Crashing upon those who dared, drowning out the shouting". The previous stanza was about how the explorer's bravery had gotten them that far, but was now futile. The second is about the destruction of scientific laboratories and churches. There is a theme surrounding any discussion of the end of the world which is how whatever we have now becomes meaningless. The anglerfish in the preceding stanza had evolved to allow it to see in the dark in a very similar way to how humans have evolved scientifically to help us understand the world. The last part describes the ocean as washing away the boundaries of the nations and destroying the world's countries. The stanza before it was about how the ocean floor was nothing but sand and bare structures, just as the world would be if it returned to how it was before there were people. The larger stanzas become increasingly short, which was my way of chronicling the destruction with the structure of the poem.