SCANNING THE POEM

SCANNING THE POEM
Scanning poetry is different from skimming it. To scan a poem means to identify the rhythm, which in English poetry comes from the alteration of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Begin by looking at the polysyllabic words--the words of more than one syllable. Say each word aloud and try to determine which syllable you stress. If you are unsure, look up the word in the dictionary, where you will see an accent mark either before or after the stressed syllable. In The American Heritage College Dictioanry, for example, the accent appears before the stressed syllable. If you are using another dictionary, look up "pronunciation" in the dictionary's guide to reading entries. In your text book, place an accent mark (/) over each stressed syllable and a horizontal line over the unstressed syllables (-).
Now look for all the one-syllable structure words--words that have little or no meaning, but rather serve to connect other words and show their relationships. Structure words include articles (a, an, the), conjunctions (and, or, but), prepositions (of, in, on, to, etc.), and auxiliaries (have, may, do, will, etc.). Mark these words as unstressed.
Mark one-syllable nouns and verbs as stressed.
Read the poem aloud, using your marks as a guide to which syllables to stress. Look for one of the following patterns: iambic (- /), trochaic (/ -), anapestic (- - /), and dactyllic (/ - -). Most English poetry that has a regular rhythm is iambic. If you don't see one of these patterns, try to change a few of the marks on the one-syllable words. If you see a pattern now, write the name of the rhythm in your notebook. You probably still will notice a few anomalies, places where the rhythm changes from the regular pattern, but ignore these anomalies for now. If you still don't see a pattern, count the number of stressed syllables in three consecutive lines. If these lines do not have the same number of stressed syllables, the poem probably does not have a regular rhythm; in other words, it probably is written in free verse.
Draw vertical lines around each instance of a pattern. Each one of these units is called a "metrical foot" or simply a "foot." For example, if the line you scanned has the markings - / - / - / - / - /, you would recognize the iambic pattern and mark the line this way: - / - / - / - / - /. Count the number of units in each line. In most cases, this number will be the same for every line of the poem. In the previous example, you would count five units, or five feet. Use the following terms to identify the number of feet in the lines: dimeter (2 feet), trimeter (3 feet), tetrameter (4 feet), pentameter (5 feet), and hexameter (6 feet). You now have identified the overall pattern of rhythm in the poem. In our example, the rhythm is iambic pentameter.


A unit with two stresses is called a spondee, and a unit with two unstressed syllables is called a pyrrhic foot. Try to determine what role these anomalies play. For example, many times spondees call attention to important words, images, or ideas.
Look for rhyme. Look at the final words in the first and second lines. Do they rhyme with each other or any other final words? If so, the poem probably has a rhyme scheme, a pattern of rhyme. To label the rhyme scheme, place the letter "a" at the end of the first line. If the final word in the next line rhymes with this word, label it "a" also; otherwise, label it "b." Continue this process, identifying rhyming words with the same letter. Now look at the words that rhyme. Are they similar in meaning, or are they contrasting words? In your notebook, note any places where the rhyme is significant and suggest a way this rhyme contributes to the poem's meaning.
Finally, read the poem one more time aloud. Practice using pauses and stress to make the poem's meaning come alive in your recitation. In your notebook, make any final comments on the way the poem's content and form work together to create meaning.
Quick Guide to Prosody

Think of the major technical components of poetry as roughly equivalent to the way music is represented on the page, turning something you hear into something you can see.

I. RHYME involves matching sounds of words. As melody is to music, so is RHYME to poetry. The sounds of vowels are what create most rhymes. Because you can hear the words that match they have sounds that are (somewhat) analagous to different notes (do, re, mi etc.) .

To scan a poem for ryhme, you assign a single alphabetical letter, starting with a to the sound of the last word in the line. Whatever the first sound or end rhyme is, mark it "A." If the next word has the same vowel sound (tree, sea or tree, see), mark the next line "A." IF the next line has a different vowel sound, mark it "B." Lines with the same end vowel sound, the same rhyme, get the same letter.

Example: The first four lines of Byron's "She Walks in Beauty":

She walks in beauty like the night a
Of cloudless climes and starry skies b
And all that's best of dark and bright a
Meet in her aspect and her eyes. b

In this case a and b are both exact rhymes. Any pattern of lines that alternate in this way form an example of alternate rhyme.When any line rhymes with the very next line, that is called a couplet. If three lines in a row rhyme, that's a triplet.



II. METER
If rhyme is like melody, meter is the aspect of time, involving rhythm and accents of poetry. Whereas musicians represent time and beat with a time signature, like 4/4, 3/4, or 6/8, readers of poetry record the beat of poetic words by dividing them into kinds of FEET based on lengths of syllables, and locations of spoken accents.

Here are the major kinds of POETIC FEET:
A foot can match one single word, or it can span several words.

iamb any two syllables, usually a single word but not always, whose accent is on the second syllable.
Example = upon, arise

trochee any two syllables, usually a single word but not always, word whose accent is on the first syllable.
Example = virtue, further

anapest any three syllables, usually a single word but not always, word whose accent is on the third syllable.
Example = intervene

dactyl any three syllables, usually a single word but not always, word whose accent is on the first syllable.
Example = tenderly

spondee any two syllables, sometimes a single word but not always, with strong accent on the first and second syllable.
Example (in this case no one word, but a series of words in this line:
The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs. The words "day wanes" form a spondee.

To name the kind of foot, use the adjective form of these words.
A line of iambs = iambic
A line of trochees = trochaic
A line of anapests = anapestic
a line of dactyls = dactylic
a line of spondees = spondaic

The number of feet in a given line is marked as a form of the word meter.
dimeter - a 2-foot line
trimeter a 3-foot line
tetrameter a 4-foot line
pentameter a 5-foot line
hexameter a 6-foot line
III. Names of Groups of lines
Any group of lines forming a unit is a stanza.
Stanza of 3 lines is a tercet
Stanza of 4 lines is a quatrain
Stanza of 6 lines is a sestet
Stanza of 7 lines is a septet
Stanza of 8 lines is an octave
How to Scan a poem.
Mark the rhyme, with single alphabets (eg. abab) and the meter by counting the number of feet, and the kind of feet in the line. Not all lines contain only one kind of foot. For example, quite often the first foot of an iambic line is reversed, making it a
trochee. When this happens in a poetic line it is called a "trochaic inversion." As you'll see these poetic laws are meant to be interpreted, and they are often bent.

Iamb = Ú / (second syllable gets the accent)
Ú / Ú / Ú / Ú /
My love is of a birth as rare a number of feet = 4 iambs
Ú / Ú / Ú / Ú /
As 'tis, for object, strange and high; b number of feet = 4 iambs
Ú / Ú / Ú / Ú /
It was begotten by Despair a number of feet = 4 iambs
Ú / Ú / Ú /Ú /
Upon Impossibility. b number of feet = 4 iambs

Remarks: the first stanza of Marvell's poem is therefore in iambic tetrameter. The basic foot is the iamb, and there are four of them in each line. Note how the first line shows iamb can be split across two words, and in line 4 how multiple iambs can occur within one word.


(Rishi Kumar Nagar, Jalandhar)