[JamesMichel]

I've been trying to figure out how to acuratly scan and work out what the meter is in poems. And I am having some problems figuring it out. So here are some very basic questions that I have not been able to get answers for out of any of the books I found.

1. Some words have a hard and a soft syllabes. Such as "turned". "Turn is a single syllable but the "ed" only adds a very small secondary syllable to the word. It appears to be part of the single one but si ti really? Do I cound it as one to two?

2. I've noticed that a poems lines can be read very differently in how the syllables are stressed. So I have often come up with different meter for the same line each time I've tried to figure out the meter. Is there a single way to read the lines to get a consistant meter?

3. Last is an example of a set of lines I've tried to determine meter on. Can you point out what it really should be and how I went wrong?

/ - - / - - / - - / - - /
A faceless crowd awaits me eyes glowing in the dark

/ - - / - - / - / - / - /
To rip my music from me and leave a bleeding mark


Pretty basic questions but thanks for help.

James Michel

[Roger Slater]

James, you ask too much all at one time. I'll provide one quick answer. The word "turned" is one syllable, not two, and that's how it should be scanned. The fact that it is a long syllable, and takes a lot more time to say than "a", for example, affects the sound of the line, to be sure, but not the metrical scansion.

As to your second question, there are many lines that can be scanned in more than one way, particularly when considered in isolation (e.g., a line that could be scanned as tetrameter in a tetrameter poem or pentameter in a pentameter poem, and depends on surrounding lines to establish a base pattern).

In your third question, why would you give a stress to the initial "A" or "To"? It's not how you'd say it, I'm sure.

But no one here will take the time to help you until you've learned a bit more on your own. Try reading at least the first two chapters of Timothy Steele's "All the fun's in how you say a thing," or at least read Pinsky's "The Sounds of Poetry," and then read a lot of metered poetry, and if you still have questions, by all means float them at Eratosphere.



[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited February 19, 2004).]

[Wild Bill]

To answer your question 3 more directly, I scan those two lines as follows:

A FACE |less CROWD | aWAITS me | | eyes GLOW | ing IN | the DARK
To RIP | my MU |sic FROM me | and LEAVE | a BLEED |ing MARK

You have chosen an odd syntactical arrangement which affects the way the natural stresses fall in ordinary speech. To separate the subject "crowd" from the infinitive phrase "to rip..." is a usage error that complicates matters further.

The placements of "me" are unnaturally stressed (or unstressed) in my ordinary manner of speaking.

I scan this as hexameter which, as you have demonstrated, is difficult to maintain over even two lines, let alone a whole poem.

I'd suggest better attention to the fundamentals of english composition before tackling versification.

[This message has been edited by Wild Bill (edited February 20, 2004).]