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Scansion

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twelveoone

ground zero
Joined
Mar 13, 2004
Posts
5,882
Simple questions
who uses it and why, and what type
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scansion
from wikipedia
However, marking stress is not the same as marking meter. A perfectly regular line of iambic pentameter may have anywhere from 2 to 9 stresses

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_of_scansion

Let me expand on the why question, what do you think it is doing for your work?

This is coming from the enemy camp, as I feel it has always been a rather jerry-rigged system that falls down much too often to have any great validity.
The people that I like best here don't use it, so why, show me what I'm missing.
 
I almost never use it. When I first started writing sonnets I'd try to mark stressed and unstressed syllables so I'd recognize the difference in the sounds. That was before I realized that iambs are very easy to hear because they're common in English speech. Mostly though I think it gets in the way of my muse. I do think it's helpful to understand scansion in a rudimentary way because different patterns have different effects and I do like to feel I'm intentionally choosing the effects I want, but I don't like to feel as if I'm doing some kind of puzzle when I'm trying to write a poem. Just my opinion.
 
HarryHill said:
...........
Click to expand...
don't mark it read mike snider's blog

On a slightly different point, Frost often claimed there were “strict iambics” and “loose iambics,” and the latter contained fairly frequent anapestic substitutions. He still considered them iambic lines, and if there were five feet (or some number of his double feet and the requisite complement of singles), he considered them iambic pentameter.

did you go find Eliot's Reflections on Vers Libre

But the most interesting verse which has yet been written in our language has been done either by taking a very simple form, like the iambic pentameter, and constantly withdrawing from it, or taking no form at all, and constantly approximating to a very simple one. It is this contrast between fixity and flux, this unperceived evasion of monotony, which is the very life of verse.

I just did it for you, it is generally agreed Frost and Eliot were better than most, and they had good ears, but they did not have the instrumentation that MIT has


and I just threw something down...
However, marking stress is not the same as marking meter. A perfectly regular line of iambic pentameter may have anywhere from 2 to 9 stresses

that should have made the purists howl

and there are inherent contradictions in that statement, and Mike Snider's blog, that can only be explained by the changing of the definition of metre



Tristesse2 said:
I thought they were a type of onion. :cool:
Click to expand...
well tess sometimes it does bring tears to my eyes, but due to my well honed sense of humour, of laughter
 
twelveoone said:
don't mark it read mike snider's blog

assdeep in literal waters with the first link in this thread. If I'm going to read, dont want it to be a chore to return for the rest

On a slightly different point
Click to expand...

..
learned a lot on the last safari you sent me on, until my eyes glazed over. here are some of the things I discovered that may (to me) fit in with the conversation.
..
Monometer - Two to three syllables is a foot (unstressed/stressed)
Dimeter - Two feet (Iamb?)
Trimeter - A yard?
...
...
..
...
...
.............. feet ..................
Trochaic - stressed/unstressed
Anapestic - unstressed, unstressed/stressed
Dactylic - stressed/unstressed,unstressed
Spondee - stressed/stressed
Pyrhhic - unstressed/unstressed
.............................................
did you go find Eliot's Reflections on Vers Libre
...............................................................
Yeah that's where all the above came from eventually
and I submit that the different styles of feet would
fit very nicely into scansion
ie. verse
Trochaic, Dactylic, Spondee
Trochaic, Dactylic, Spondee
Pyrhhic
......
just my thought
..
just read the blog seems I'm on the right track
but I never (knowingly) consider speach streses
for me it's more of the words relations to each other
 
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HarryHill said:
just read the blog seems I'm on the right track
but I never (knowingly) consider speach streses
for me it's more of the words relations to each other
Click to expand...
to paraphrase angeline
if it seems you're on the right track
you probably are
but before you run off with your feets
read
Robinson Jeffers, & The Metric Fallacy
and this one will really make your head spin
RHYTHM IN POETRY: RHYTHMIC ANALYSIS

anyway this thread, was a put up or shut up thread, because I really don't like certain people here.
Metrics are largely a sham, they measure nothing of real worth (it can be a useful tool), here it has been misused as a sort of either a barrier to entry (to some mysterious guild), or as an assumption of some superiour worth. And the basic operating assumption that their minds take is I don't understand what is going on, thereforth it must not have worth, which is pretty much the same as that taken by some of the sub-literates around here.

Now, I am not going to be totally dismissive, they have an opinion and it is a learned opinion and that has to taken into regard, but if the opinion seems to be too self directed, take that into regard also.

ps a trimeter is not a yard, a meter is bigger than a yard by about 3 inches, so a trimeter would be about 10 feet and thereforth close to a daisy chain
 
twelveoone said:
<clip>.....anyway this thread, was a put up or shut up thread, because I really don't like certain people here.
Metrics are largely a sham, they measure nothing of real worth (it can be a useful tool), here it has been misused as a sort of either a barrier to entry (to some mysterious guild), or as an assumption of some superiour worth. And the basic operating assumption that their minds take is I don't understand what is going on, thereforth it must not have worth, which is pretty much the same as that taken by some of the sub-literates around here.

Now, I am not going to be totally dismissive, they have an opinion and it is a learned opinion and that has to taken into regard, but if the opinion seems to be too self directed, take that into regard also.</clip>
Click to expand...

That's right, just an opinion. Isn't that what this thread's all about? Your opinion? :) <<<<passive/aggresive smilie face. (not shutting up)
 
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Tristesse2 said:
That's right, just an opinion. Isn't that what this thread's all about? Your opinion? :) <<<<passive/aggresive smilie face. (not shutting up)
Click to expand...
yes, but it may be a learned opinion, and it starts here
The idea as such was first expressed by Kenneth L. Pike in 1945; though the concept of language naturally occurring in chronologically and rhythmically equal measures is found at least as early as 1775 (in Prosodia Rationalis). While many linguists find the idea of different rhythm types appealing, empirical studies have not been able to find acoustic correlates of the postulated types, calling into question the validity of these types.[1][2][3]
I've been looking into some of this, also the history of England in regards to the development of a theory of metre, the foot as an very elemental bit of a sound stream, you do talk to foreigners more slowly and with more emphasis, don't you? Less so when everybody knows every body else. How many languages in England before the black death? How many variants of English (the er, Lingua franca) since the sun done set on the big red blotch on the globe.
And what in the hell are Frost and Eliot talking about, anyway? I've read various and conflicting accounts. Apparently it is a lot more complex, than a poet guy would have you believe. Used as a grid, a template it is one thing, as a metric for measurement quite another, the stink of staleness sets in. You may as well succumb to advertizing.

What I really find amazing is why the lack of specifics, why this dumb set that seems to have set in, and why is it that when a feverman shows up and wants to know why his sonnet isn't a particular type of sonnet, the free verse guy has to show him.

And yes, it is my opinion and I did state it in the first post. Now quit baiting me. Free verse lass, to whom if I must point out I find your work more interesting than the pro forma invoices that are laid out in new poems at least twice a week.

I do want to go and write some perfectly forgettable poetry, of which I've been told I do. Quite often to the tune of 5 or 6 a year.
 
I still think in feet rather than meters. All this just muddies the poetic waters for me. Sorry Twelvie, I’m still going to lobby for meter from poets who insist on rhyming. Horse/cart – pen/ ink – rhyme/rhythm.
 
Tristesse2 said:
I still think in feet rather than meters. All this just muddies the poetic waters for me. Sorry Twelvie, I’m still going to lobby for meter from poets who insist on rhyming. Horse/cart – pen/ ink – rhyme/rhythm.
Click to expand...
as is your prerogative,
everything I write I regard as free verse and/ or syllabic, but do use rhyme
we may (and probably are) be talking about two different things
you may be talking about the use of rhyme as the sole tool in a mess, and often used badly at that (insist on rhyming)
this may be because of the confusion (and blurring) of songwriting and poetry

In songwriting end rhyme is a memory tool. In poetry it is more of a handicap.

BTW I mentioned this once before, I saw a technical paper(funded by a government grant) that showed a large percentage of people only recognize poetry as poetry IF it has end rhyme

and as far as muddying the waters, sometimes the silt must be stirred
 
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