The Snappy Guide to Scanning a Poem
Contents
1. which is the repetition of the consonant or consonants following the vowel but the use of different vowels or a combination of the two using either vowels or consonants that are similar but not the same Rhyme variation often happens in hip hop lyrics often with comic effect as in Eminem s Lose Yourself Yo His palms are sweaty knees weak arms are heavy There s vomit on his sweater already mom s spaghetti He s nervous but on the surface he looks calm and ready To drop bombs but he keeps on forgetting What he wrote down the whole crowd grows so loud He opens his mouth but the words won t come out The vowel sounds in sweaty heavy sweater already spaghetti and ready all assonate so they are near rhymes as are down crowd loud mouth and out Part of Eminem s skill in this composition is the way he strings both internal and final rhymes together to unify the lines Different periods and dialects of English may make certain rhymes possible that do not seem evident in contemporary Modern Standard English All of these rhymes reflect pronunciations in which the sounds actually do rhyme or form near rhymes A few examples in Early Modern English poetry including Shakespeare are e Words ending in y or ly etc rhyme with words like die and eye memory die symmetry eye e Words ending in unaccented a rhyme with words like day ulia day e Words having the oi diphthong rhyme with words with a long i bo style e2. Do and go often rhyme perhaps as a close o sound intermediate between oh and oo something like the sound of the o in Minnesota as pronounced by some Minnesotans e Likewise done sometimes rhymes with gone Somewhat similarly ove often rhymes with move and prove perhaps the vowel in all of them was about the same as now the vowel in foot a pronunciation still current for these words in some areas of Northern England and Scotland e In Scottish texts such as ballads words ending in e may rhyme with words ending in ee die see Likewise other words may be syllabified differently in Early Modern English in ways that affect rhyme In Shakespeare s Sonnet 18 temperate takes three syllables TEM puh rate rather than TEMP ruht and rhymes with date In Anne Bradstreet s poetry safety takes three syllables SAFE uh tee or SAFE uh tie and rhymes in ways that apply to other y endings Difference is sometimes pronounced as three syllables and rhymes with words like fence hence as it does in a modern poem Robert Frost s The Road Not Taken So why does rhyme matter Because when poets put patterns of rhyme together they give shape and emphasis to the meaning of the poem These patterns of rhyme are called rhyme schemes We usually describe them by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme For example abab indicates a four line stanza in which the first and third lines rhyme as do the second and fourth Here is an exam
3. That doesn t rhyme and throw the book down in disgust Word meanings have changed too and the Oxford English Dictionary is the best place to look up words and figure out what they meant at the time a particular author was writing And if you re working with Emily Dickinson who was inspired by the many hymn meters of her time remember that she counts syllables and not feet but that s matter for a different Snappy Guide
4. cavalry charge Horses galloping The verse gallops too three styllable trimeter Anapaestic Unstressed unstressed STRESSED sprang to the stirrup and Joris and he galloped Dirck galloped we galloped all three SPRANG to the STIRR up and JOR is and HE GALL oped Dirck GALL oped we GALL oped all THREE More galloping The problem is you can t do too much of this or it gets really tedious That s why the poet has placed an iambic substitution in the first foot Apart from that it s all galloping You don t really have to worry about these When they occur they are obvious and easy to scan And they very rarely happen More worrying is Mixed meter Towards the end of the nineteenth century and into the beginning of the twentieth poets began to feel that the rule book was pretty much of a hindrance that all the good stuff had been done in the usual forms So they started getting creative with the rule book When this happens in a poem it s obvious when you read it that something is going on because the meter is so strange but scanning it is difficult However don t worry it is so difficult that no one will mind if you get bits of it wrong We won t even go into Gerard Manly Hopkins sprung rhythm here if you must know buy Dr Naufftus or Dr Brownson a cup of coffee and ask them to explain it to you What about rhyme schemes Rhyme is the repetition of similar sounds in comparable syllables of diff
5. the fourth foot to give a build up to the image of the eyes of all these dead young men Shall SHINE the HOL y GLIM mers of goodBYES Repetition of the pyrrhic substitution in the fourth foot to give a pattern the goodbyes are in their EYES Also to give a pause wait for it before the tragic final two syllables of the line You can find the whole of this fantastic poem here So when you analyze a poem what you need to do is to find all the substitutions and comment on them In a good poet there will be a reason for every one and the reason will be to do with the meaning of the poem Line endings Next look at the line endings How do they affect the meaning The lines will either be end stopped the line ends with a natural break in the sense often emphasized by punctuation Shall compare thee to a summer s day Thou art more lovely and more temperate Or else the line will run on And sometime like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook This is called enjambment and is often used for poetic effect as here the line end plus the trochaic substitution in the first foot of the second line give you the balancing act that she must do as she crosses the brook John Donne was a master of enjambment On a huge hill Cragged and steep Truth stands and he that will Reach her about must and about must go And what the hill s suddenness resists win so Note the emphasis on ed in CRAG
6. The Snappy Guide to Scanning a Poem Adapted by Dr K from materials at http www english bham ac uk staff tom teaching firstyear06 howtoscan htm and http www amittai com prose meter php Note This Guide is heavily based on and deeply indebted to Stephen Fry s excellent book The Ode Less Travelled which anyone interested in poetry should read It also draws from John Hollander s Rhyme s Reason an equally informative and entertaining book If you ve grown up on a steady diet of free verse it probably comes as a nasty surprise to you that not all poetry in English is written that way Robert Frost told the students at Milton Academy in 1935 that Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down and many poets before and since have chosen to meet the challenge of meter and rhyme when creating their works Part of being an English major and taking the GRE subject exam etc etc is learning how to scan a poem that is to determine its meter and its rhyme scheme In doing so you ll gain insight not only into what the poet wanted to emphasize in the poem but also be able to connect it to other works by the poet and others in the same metrical and prosodic forms helping you to place a poem in its historical period and circumstances So learning to play poetic tennis by mastering meter and rhyme is a big part of your development as critical readers of literature Let s look at the two main areas separately
7. a Words ending in er or en e g ever never or heaven given are often treated as one syllable heav n In older texts they are sometimes spelled that way too b When a word ends with ed the ed can be pronounced as a separate syllable naked or not passed Sometimes it s optional winged can be said with two syllables or one wing d Poets exploit that possibility to add or lose a syllable Watch out for it c When two vowels are next to each other they can often be scanned either as two syllables or one offbeat syllable depending on what the poet needs for the meter In words that have a u before another vowel it may be treated like a w unusual un U zhwal 3 syllables or un U zhu AL 4 syllables may be treated as a y proverbial pro VERB yal or pro VERB i AL You can detect this by simply relying on your instinct as a native speaker of English d When you have an unaccented vowel ending one word and another one beginning the next word you can elide it means slur or run them together This is called elision The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is spoken as Th expense of spirit in a waste of shame e The endings tion and sion may be scanned as one syllable as today or as two with secondary stress on the on Our two souls therefore which are one Though must go endure not yet A breach but an expansion Like gold to aery thinness beat A BREACH but an exPAN si on After
8. d verbs after that adjectives and adverbs unstressed are unimportant words and sounds prefixes suffixes prepositions particles Stressed syllables are those that you will recognize as stressed because you are a native speaker no one would say DEcay for instance Mark the stressed syllables above the words with a diagonal line and the unstressed with a horizontal line You will find that the majority of feet are unstressed syllables preceding stressed ones like this the WOODS That is an iamb the meter therefore is iambic But what if the poet cheats and changes some of the feet Poets will do that If poetry were just a machine that churned out foot after foot of the same rhythm there would be a Google tool that did it for you mechanically What changes mechanical sing song verse into poetry is how the poet uses occasional variation in the meter to subtly emphasize the meaning of the poem This is what makes the poem interesting and not just a sing song chant though a good poet can get wonderful effects from a sing song chant There are three possible kinds of substitution Instead of unstressed stressed iambic you can have 1 stressed unstressed This is a trochee and is therefore trochaic substitution 2 stressed stressed This is a spondee and is therefore spondaic substitution 3 unstressed unstressed This is a pyrrhus and therefore pyrrhic substitution Here are some examples to show how the substitutions
9. erent words In standard rhyme in English the initial consonant or initial consonant group of rhyming syllables is not repeated but the rest of the syllable is repeated the vowel and any closing consonant or consonants if present Standard rhyming matches the vowel of the last stressed syllable of rhyming words and any sounds following the vowel including any unstressed syllables coming after that last stressed syllable Thus folk rhymes with poke allow rhymes with plow hollow rhymes with follow and writing rhymes with exciting Exciting does not rhyme with thing however since the ng in exciting is not stressed Any rhyme with exciting must repeat the entire sound following the initial consonant of the last stressed syllable here soft c and thus must end in ting Rhymes consisting of stressed final syllables alone are called masculine rhymes such as approach coach rhymes including an unstressed syllable after the stressed one are called feminine Apo lo swallow Rhyme is determined by sound not spelling so don t get fooled Which of these two pair of words rhyme puff enough through though Standard rhymes are perfect rhymes in which the vowel of the last stressed syllable and all following sounds are repeated exactly Some poetry uses near rhymes also called slant rhymes or imperfect rhymes These may make use of assonance which is the repetition of the vowel but with different consonants following it or consonance
10. ged The poem imitates the action and effort will REACH of climbing the hill in search for truth In the last line the trochaic substitution in the third foot plus the elision or running together of the middle syllable of that foot SUDd nness plus the awkward s sounds give the effort and difficulty of the climb the spondaic substitution in the last foot gives a sense of release and success Brilliant And WHAT the HILL S SUDd nness reSISTS WIN SO Despite what your first grade teacher taught you about stopping and taking a breath at the end of each line of poetry so that all the other first graders could hear the rhymes when a line is enjambed you should read it that way so that your audience hears the energy and motion of that wraparound syntax You can give a slight pause at the line s end but don t read enjambed lines in that sing song Mary Had A Little Lamb way if you re a grownup student of literature Save it for reading to the class day at your child s elementary school The Caesura Most lines of poetry have a natural pause usually in the middle This is the caesura Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes This can be used to reinforce the meaning And what the hill s suddenness resists win so That s a delayed caesura before the last foot reinforcing the feeling of triumph and attainment in wait for it WIN SO So in each line of a poem look for the caesura and see what sort of wo
11. in a good poet enhance the meaning Trochaic substitution Far from the madding crowd s ignoble strife FAR from the MAD ding CROWD S ignOB le STRIFE Trochaic substitution in the first foot to emphasize distance My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains My HEART ACHES and a DROW sy NUMB ness PAINS Trochaic substitution in the second foot to emphasise the ache the pain Spondaic substitution On BOTH SIDES THUS is SIM ple TRUTH supPRESS D Spondaic substitution in the second foot to show how the world contradicts itself the whole of Shakespeare s Sonnet 138 is intricately patterned around the theme of lies and contradictions Pyrrhic substitution Shall compare thee to a summer s day SHALL i comPARE thee to a SUM mer s DAY Trochaic substitution in the first foot to emphasise wondering But also pyrrhic substitution in the third foot like a pause as he thinks of something amazing to compare her with And finds it You could read the first foot as a iamb but the trochaic stress seems better to me at any rate This is not rocket science you get choices Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes NOT in the HANDS of BOYS but in their EYES This is Wilfred Owen on the horror of the First World War where young men boys were slaughtered in hundreds of thousands Trochaic substitution in the first foot to emphasise NOT pyrrhic substitution in
12. oing to be iambic The vast majority of poems that you will come across are in meters of iambic pentameter five feet ten syllables or iambic tetrameter four feet eight syllables Three syllable feet do occur but they are rare and usually used for special effect comedy or onomatopoeia where the sound of the poetry imitates the subject of the poem More about them below So the first thing to do is to read the poem to yourself either out loud or in your head If it is based on three syllable feet you ll notice it If not then it is almost certainly iambic If it is mark up the line with a pencil putting in a vertical line after every two syllables The woods decay the woods decay and fall when you are old and grey and full of sleep If you can t make it fit to a two syllable pattern check the expansion contraction rules below If you still can t check the trisyllabic feet below If you re working on computer you can either capitalize the STRESSED syllables or change the color of the font whatever works for you When you ve sorted out the feet read the poem again for the sound Emphasize the stressed syllables the way you would in normal conversation not with any funny or literary effect The WOODS deCAY the WOODS deCAY and FALL when YOU are OLD and GREY and FULL of SLEEP How do you know which are stressed and which are unstressed Stressed words are important words like nouns an
13. ple of this rhyme scheme from 7o Anthea Who May Command Him Any Thing by Robert Herrick Bid me to weep and will weep While have eyes to see And having none yet will keep A heart to weep for thee Sounds in orange are marked with the letter A Sounds in purple are marked with the letter B So the rhyme scheme of this stanza is ABAB Some rhyme schemes are so consistent that literary critics have given special names to them this is particularly true of sonnets An Italian or Petrarchan sonnet will rhyme lines of iambic pentameter using five sounds in the pattern abba abba with a sestet of cde cde in some variation there are lots of possibilities An English or Shakespearean sonnet will rhyme iambic pentameter lines using seven sounds in the pattern abab cdcd efef gg A Spenserian or masochistic sonnet will rhyme iambic pentameter lines using five sounds in the pattern abab bcbc cdcd ee Tennyson s n Memoriam stanza was rhymed lines of iambic tetrameter in the pattern abba Learn the basics and before you know it you ll be tossing off clerihews ottava rima rondelets and sestinas with lavish abandon If you want some practice try the examples on this web page http www curriki org xwiki bin view Coll_ rmlucas Poetry RhymeSchemePractice When determining a rhyme scheme remember that the pronunciation of words has changed greatly over the years Give some thought to how a word might have sounded before you decide
14. rk it s doing The eleven syllable iambic pentameter line Poets aren t necessarily good at math but sometimes they miscount for a reason Occasionally you ll find a line that feels like iambic pentameter but has eleven syllables called a hendecasyllable t s because though most English words end with a stressed syllable many don t and poets didn t want to deny themselves the possibility of ending a line with one of them such as tomorrow or question Do these sound familiar To BE or NOT to BE THAT is the QUES tion 11 syllables with a trochaic reversal after the caesura Hamlet is very puzzled and fears death ToMORR ow and TOMORR ow and ToMORR ow Hendecasyllablic with no less than two pyrrhic substitutions Because so many syllables are unstressed the stressed syllable sounds like the crack of doom bang wait for it Bang wait for it BANG Two of the greatest lines in the whole of English For that you can learn to live with a long mysterious sounding Greek word hendecasyllabic The same goes for a line famous in American pop culture To BOLD ly GO where no MAN has GONE BE fore The hendecasyllabic intrusion in the middle of the line makes you wait for the result of that bold going and then that trochaic or some would say spondaic ending just punches the meaning home That s why the line is so memorable the rhythms just engrave it on your ears Expansion contraction rules
15. starting with meter Name that foot The basic meter of English poetry is iambic two syllables to a foot That s part of our Indo European language heritage since Indo European featured short syllables as building blocks for words Note that the names follow a consistent pattern an adjective describing the shape of the foot or basic stress pattern and a noun telling you how many feet are in a line Thus iambic pentameter tells you that you have five iambs in your line Pretty simple once you know what the feet are And since there only a handful of stress patterns once you get them down you just have to count the syllables in the line and you re in business OK so what do these funny words mean The basic six sound patterns in English have names of Greek etymology and look like this iimb _ EF 2 7 The falling out of faithful friends renewing is of love trochee lz la laz Double double toil and trouble anapest __ Z _ 7 _ am monarch of all survey dactyl __ Take her up tenderly spondee pyrrhic __ os andthe white breast ofthe dim sea The names of the line lengths are easy too There s a prefix that tells you how many feet and the root word is always meter monometer one foot pentameter five feet dimeter two feet hexameter six feet trimeter three feet heptameter seven feet tetrameter fourfeet octameter eight feet It s probably g
16. the caesura the two pyrrhic substitutions surround the iambic foot so that the emphasis exPANDS to compensate Don t be intimidated by this It s not difficult and mostly you can get it by instinct Practice out loud while you re working with that pencil the worst that can happen is that people around you will hear some good poetry instead of the blather of people chatting on their cell phones But what if it s not iambic Well it s either going to be trochaic or dactyllic or anapaestic But these strange meters will always signal themselves clearly and either be used for comic effect or for sound effect You can hardly not notice them or mistake them And they really are rare Trochaic STRESSED unstressed You could trace them through the valley By the rushing in the Spring time By the alders in the Summer By the white fog in the Autumn By the black line in the Winter YOU could TRACE them THROUGH the VALLey BY the RUSHing IN the SPRING time and so on and on This is Longfellow s Hiawatha It s very monotonous Very hard to think of another example of pure trochaic with good reason the English language doesn t like it three styllable trimeter Dactyllic STRESSED unstressed unstressed Cannon to right of them Cannon to left of them Cannon in front of them Volleyed and thundered CANNon to RIGHT of them CANNon to LEFT of them CANNon in FRONT of them VOLLeyed and THUNdered It s about a
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