I was staying on topic Janice. I didn't read your other thread.

My personal complaint is with "your" and "you're". It has receded a little I think.

Holly

You introduce an interesting point. I have made an intensive study of automatic textual analysis and I can tell you that there is no known algorithm for reducing text to syllables (in English at least), let alone "scanning". Partly because there are no universally accepted rules, but, moreso, because English has its roots in so many other languages and inherits their varying stress patterns.

I made considerable progress on the matter (and I am no mean programmer) by analysing a number of available electronic dictionaries (there are a fair few) but eventually gave up because my own ear was undoubtedly better. One has to hard code so many exceptions to any rules one cares to dream up.

There are some reasonable heuristics but they fail often enough to make them not worth the candle.

I think I might be saddened had I been successful.

Philip

Jerome, according to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, the original English spelling was "program" and the fancy version was added later on.
I was marginally involved with a multi-volume history of performance and it was decided to use the simpler spelling.

Other than for obvious typos/ignorances (its for it's, e.g.), there's no profit in trying to decide whether anomalies are mistakes or not. Metrical regularity is not an end in itself (notwithstanding the mindset around here); it's a means to an end. Metrical substitutions are neither good nor bad in themselves; they, too, are means to ends. What matters is whether they help or hinder the poem's achievement; and the poet's "intentions"--assuming you were capable of reading enough pigeon entrails to determine them--are irrelevant. "But I meant it to be that way" has never salvaged a lousy line; and "Hey, I was writing better than I knew" is just as good as any other explanation.

RHE

Thanks, (Janet and) Maryann. I would hate to be perceived as (or to become) one of Peter's Jante people, though. I shall consider that carefully while seeking out a thread from months ago whereon someone posted a poem about a similar situation. All good headfood; I shall digest it. Again, thanks.

Any discussion of scansion usually raises interesting and differing opinions. This particular thread prompted me to poke through my bookcase and retrieve a text from my university years: Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry by Laurence Perrine (Harcourt Brace, Third Edition, 1969). This classic poetry handbook was originally published in 1956 and has gone through many editions. I don't know if it's still in print, but for decades it served as a bible for students undertaking a serious study of poetry.

Here are a few excerpts from Chapter 12, "Rhythm and Meter":

Scansion is at best a gross way of describing the rhythmical quality of a poem. It depends on classifying all syllables into either accented or unaccented categories and on ignoring the sometimes considerable difference between degrees of accent. Whether we call a syllable accented or unaccented depends, moreover, on its degree of accent relative to the syllables on either side of it.

Scansion is not an altogether exact science. Within certain limits we may say that a certain scansion is right or wrong, but beyond these limits there is legitimate room for personal interpretation and disagreement between qualified readers.

Finally—and this is the most important generalization of all—perfect regularity of meter is no criterion of merit.

Perrine's remarks about scansion are consistent with those I've read by other eminent scholars in a variety of texts, and we would be wise to heed their insights when composing metrical poetry lest our verses become petrified.

Richard

Well said Richard. Poetry is not an opportunity to exercise discipline and restraint. The word nuance comes to mind.

What Richard Meyer said. Sage stuff.

Janet, with the greatest respect, I spit me of mere historical precedent. I prefer 'programme' to 'program' (apart from the exception I mentioned). That is, until we have a complete reform of English spelling. But it's only visual. I don't find Webster's watered down revision any bar to enjoying the contributions of those Sphereans whose ancestors, perverse as it may seem, decided to set up a republic in 17 whenever it was.

I don't think Richard said anything, or quoted anything, that everyone here doesn't already know. Very familiar stuff. But the crack about letting our meter be "petrafied" was, I think, rather unfair, since Petra also knows all the truisms about meter that Richard accurately recited. Richard's source is quoted as saying:

"Within certain limits we may say that a certain scansion is right or wrong"

Surely Petra's point had to do with mistakes existing within those acknowledged limits. I certainly did not hear her call for perfect regularity of meter, or claim that outside those certain limits there may not be frequent and intelligent disagreement and opinionating that cannot be neatly and unanimously declared either right or wrong.

Some folks have taken this simple and perhaps unnecessary observation as an occasion to proclaim their own sophistication in matters metrical and to assure the rest of us that they are beyond mechanical rules of sing-song verse and no prisoners to scansion like rank beginners. Well, bully for you all. I pretty much take that for granted about just about everyone here, if you must know, including Petra, and there's really no need to strut about possessing a quality we all have in common.

But notwithstanding our nuanced sophistication, let's face it. There's such a thing as a metrical gaffe, the kind of mistake even its perpetrator would not defend once it's pointed out. I don't see many of them here, but I agree it would behoove us all to try to spot those before we post, particularly if we are posting the Deep End.

we would be wise to heed their insights when composing metrical poetry lest our verses become petrafied.

A meynor spelling mistake, Richard, or are you being malicious?