Scansion computer application
 

Has anyone seen one of these that actually worked? The whole matter seems technically possible, but certainly not easy, and I wonder if anyone has invested the time, energy, and money to make it happen.

It seems the height of folly to me.

It's hard enough to de-mechanize meter in composition: to find it deep within language, rather than impose it from without.

Nemo

What Nemo said.

Nemo, I agree with you entirely. There is a certain magic to it.

Which leads us to the question: Why do we often critique poems as though they were watches?

You mean this?

But most by numbers judge a poet’s song,
And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong:
In the bright Muse tho’ thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire,

Mr. Pope

I think the technical aspects are but one part of the whole that ought to be considered and that it would be silly to only focus on them to the exclusion of everything else. As that would be treating the poem as though it were but a watch.

Erik, that's wonderfully apt!

(I wish I knew more Pope.)

Quite apart from what Nemo said, in American English there are at least 35 spellings that require a high level of contextual analysis to decide where the stress should normally occur: Change the stress, change the meaning: 35 words that change meaning. It's an interesting list. All of them in the link are derived from Latin. I don't agree completely with the listed changes, but they are there.

I would suggest that, if those responsible for such lists were to do their reSEARCH properly in the first place, they would not have to REsearch the data later.

In fact I do suggest that. Often. But nobody listens, though I continue to HArass them from the sidelines.

The idea of an "App" appals me. It would take my tongue away.

Excellent addition, Ann. There are (please do activate the glottis between that pair of 'r's, or else cave in to 'there's') others that ought to be listed. My Latin teacher was aurally emphatic about the pronunciation of 'harass'. It was heresy to deviate! And it resulted in a grade book 'deficiency' -- much feared.

Why should anybody want to bother, unless they were more interested in tricks and gimmicks than poetry. It you're a poet you search within yourself and you do your best to create poetry. If you're a phony, you find an app.