How to Scan Poetry With the Three-Step Method (Supplemental Video for A Poet's Craft by Annie Finch)

[@nickwettstein1187]

Awesome, thanks for sharing! Eventually it'd be great to implement this kind of knowledge into my poems, that is, once I get the hang of it.

[@nickwettstein1187]

also, I enjoy your poetry! I wish to know more on punctuation in poems, any advice or places you can send me would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

[@AnnieFinchPoet]

@@nickwettstein1187 thank you, how nice to hear you enjoy my poetry. As for punctuation, there is some discussion of punctuation in poetry in my book A Poet's Craft, which you might find helpful..

[@AnnieFinchPoet]

reading great poems in meter aloud is a very useful way to get the hang of it--it develops body memory. If you want a nice collection to read aloud you could check out Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters

[@nickwettstein1187]

@@AnnieFinchPoet after replying I happened to find the book, I've been using it every now and again =)

[@AnnieFinchPoet]

@@nickwettstein1187 cool! Hope you are reading the poems aloud 3x; that is my motto now: #SpeakItThrice!

[@luminancebloom]

Very clear explanation--thank you! Love the idea of shouting the line to emphasize the stress!

[@AnnieFinchPoet]

You are very welcome!:)

[@lixii80]

I am an Arab girl. I am studying English literature. I have a test tomorrow. Thank you for the explanation. Wish me success🥹

[@AnnieFinchPoet]

Good luck! Hope you pass with flying colors!

[@lixii80]

@@AnnieFinchPoet Yes, I passed the exam and got a full score. Thank you for helping me ❤️

[@AnnieFinchPoet]

@@lixii80 wonderful, so glad to hear:)!

[@hifiunicorn]

The link to your books doesn't have a purchase option. How can I get a copy? Thanks!

[@anniefinch9042]

Here's a link with a purchase option. Enjoy! www.amazon.com/Poets-Craft-Comprehensive-Making-Sharing/dp/0472033646

[@AnnieFinchPoet]

Here's a link to this & the other books all together. Hope they are helpful! bookshop.org/p/book!s/how-to-scan-a-poem-a-poetry-witch-workbook-annie-finch/20040040?aid=1041&ean=9781737307563&listref=books-by-annie-finch-poetry-witch-press&

[@saramalekian3892]

Thank you 🙏🏼 I learned it :)

[@AnnieFinchPoet]

so glad it was helpful! I am now offering classes around the web and in my own community; check it out if you want to learn more...www.anniefinch.com

[@shreyabanik2987]

Could the sentence { I hear the wands, half-wands and cups} scan as iamb, iamb, trochee and iamb

[@anniefinch9042]

I see what you mean--and theoretically, maybe it could--but if you think about the actual meaning of the compound-word "half-wands" as you say it, you might find you put more emphasis on "WANDS" than on "half," because "wands" carries more information in the compound-word and hence is a more important syllable. So, if you pronounce it like that, the third foot would also be an iamb.

[@Zheugma]

This is great. I love to write poems and read poetry, study it ... I wish I could learn more

[@moonlightiguana]

Could the third line scan as an iamb, a pyrrhic, a spondee, an iamb?

[@AnnieFinchPoet]

Yes, it definitely could scan that way! the third foot, "write po," is scanned in the video as a half-wand and a wand, which is already basically a spondee (as Paul Kiparsky said, whether a foot is a spondee or not is basically just a matter of if you consider a spondee as two stresses, or as two equal stresses). And in the second foot, it would be perfectly reasonable to scan "ing to" as a pyrrhic. That decision falls into the 20% or so of scansion that is subjective, that gives a good, sensitive scansion its own unique feeling.

[@sherryking664]

Very helpful! Thank you.

[@AnnieFinchPoet]

So glad it was helpful, Sherry! (I was without a tripod so holding the camera with my other hand--but the scansion technique is as sturdy as it gets!)

[@eomalo3531]

Thank you Annie you saved my ass tonight.

[@AnnieFinchPoet]

Ha! Glad to hear!:)

[@darkengine5931]

Something that's really confusing me about English scansion, and coming from a musical background, is that it doesn't seem like conformity to classical Greek meters necessarily creates something all that rhythmic. Example: 1. The jelly master glared at Max and charged a fine. 2. The scarred master glared at Max and charged him a fine. #1 is in perfect iambic hexameter to my understanding: >> the JE lly MAS ter GLARED at MAX and CHARGED a FINE. [6 iambs] #2 seems a bit all over the place. >> the SCARRED MAS ter GLARED at MAX and CHARGED him a FINE. >> [iamb, trochee, trochee, trochee, trochee, iamb?] Yet #2 actually sounds more rhythmic and smoother to my ears given the way I pronounce it. Inserting "him" towards the end of the line seems to alleviate a sort of tension and desire to slow down/pause, and "SCARRED MAS-ter" flows more smoothly to me and seems to better evenly distribute the stressed syllables than "JE-lly MAS-ter". "SCARRED" also seems like it wants to turn into two beats given how long of a syllable it is relative to the ones around it (I take about as long to say "scarred" as I do "jelly", despite the latter being two syllables and the former only one). I want to read it and divide the stress beats somewhat like this: >> the SCARR | rred MAS | ter GLARED | at MAXx | and CHAR | rrged him | a FINE. >> / ðə skɑ | rd ˈmæs | tər glɛrd | æt mæks | ænd ʧɑ | rʤd hɪm | ə ˈfineɪ / This is decomposing the exceptionally long syllables (SCARRED and CHARGED) into two pieces which seems to help me understand the rhythm sometimes. The longer syllables often want to break into two or more sound pieces to my ears to understand their sound relationships with their surrounding sounds and also the relative timing of each sound. Another example: 1. The cat had sat on grass. 2. The cat had sat on a log. #1 sounds more rhythmically tense to my ears even though it perfectly conforms to iambic trimeter. #2 doesn't conform nicely to a syllabic meter yet it seems much more rhythmic to speak aloud. I say #1 like: 1-2: the CAT 3-4: had SAT 5-6: on GRASS [GRASS is off-timed; it's ahead of the 6th beat] ... and #2 like: 1-2: the CAT 3-4: had SAT 5-6: on a LOG [LOG is timed well to the 6th beat] Both are 6 beats (3 stressed beats), but against a steadily-timed metronome, "GRASS" is off-timed with the way I say it. It comes too early, making me want to pause if I want to smooth out the rhythm or if I don't pause, it just sounds off-beat. #2 seems to land "LOG" much more evenly in timing with "CAT" and "SAT". I can appreciate conformity to accentual/stress patterns from my musical background as part of rhythm, but a drummer consistently playing accented beat patterns is not going to sound the slightest bit rhythmic if his timings are all over the place. It seems to me like if we want the timings of accented beats to be reasonably rhythmic, we must factor in the length of the syllables involved and decompose them into smaller sound units.

[@AnnieFinchPoet]

It looks like you are counting syllables instead of hearing feet. The "scarred master" line scans best as an iambic pentameter line, with two anapestic variations (in first and last foot). Feet are best heard wtihin the context of the rhythm of the whole poem, since meter can vary wtihin the pattern. I recommend my book How to Scan a Poem: A Poetry Witch Workbook, which includes detailed explanation and sample poems to scan for practice..Here is a link: bookshop.org/a/1041/9781737307563

[@darkengine5931]

​@@AnnieFinchPoet Thank you! I think I'm neither counting syllables nor feet in a conventional sense, but rather how these syllables are timed to a metronome in natural speech. For example, "SPAR-kled" seems to take less time to say than "SPARKED on", so the timing of "kled" and "on" seem different, along with shifting the rhythmic timing of whatever succeeds them.

[@darkengine5931]

@@AnnieFinchPoetWhat I am finding at least with the cat example is that against a uniformly-timed metronome or if we clap to a steady beat, "sat on" seems to take too little time to say to neatly make "grass" land on the 3rd stress beat. If I elongate it like "slept on grass", I can avoid breaking iambic pentameter and make "grass" land closer to the 3rd stress beat. "The cat had slept on grass." That seems to land "grass" at approximately the same timing as "log" when I say, "The cat had sat on a log." So I'm often finding there are certain sections that don't sound right if the syllables are too short or too long to quantize the stress beats to a uniform timer unless we deviate from poetic meter in favor of more precise rhythmic timing.