[New-Poetry] Re: a dead ear for scansion

[Skip Fox]

Here's the real issue, Do we need it? As Tad asks/states.

If that "we" includes the people here and "need" is an issue of utmost
necessity, no. Would it help many to know it (even if they rarely use it
consciously)? Probably. Should lit. students be exposed to it to realize an
important tool poet use (and consciously use especially in work prior to
free verse)? My colleagues vary on this, but I make even freshmen try to
hear it and see it at work. 

I can scan as quickly as I can read or speak. I can't point to a way it
helps me but I can't point to a way most techniques I've learned and
practiced or the way most poets I've read directly affects my work.

With some poets, I concede, it might even be detrimental. It could make them
too self consciousness or bring them to think that there is a "correct way"
to write or speak a line (especially if they are not trying to be
neo-formalists).

But it's a good question. (I think it's helpful.)

(One I learned to read only the vowel sounds in lines--and can still do so .
. . it's not very hard. Did that help or hurt? Back then when I was stuck on
a line or phrasing, I used to listen just to the vowels. Did that help or
hurt? I think I learned something. Why not learn everything we can about
what we're doing?)

-----Original Message-----
From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
[mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of TheOldMole
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 3:53 PM
To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &Views
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: a dead ear for scansion

I wonder if we need it. I think scansion serves best as a mechanism with 
a lot of play in it.

Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote:
> In a message dated 7/23/2008 2:18:58 PM Central Daylight Time, 
> skip at louisiana.edu writes:
>> But the trick is to hear the rhythmic swell behind our language, and 
>> EVERYTHING scans. (There are, of course, variant lines, and many 
>> books even note that all stresses are not the same in intensity, 
>> etc., but basically everything in our language scans.)
>>
>>  
>>
>
> One thing that prosody/scansion never touches is the difference 
> between long and short vowel sounds in English, the different "pitch" 
> that syllables can have in speaking, the difference in pace between 
> monosyllables and polysyllables in a line of verse.  Accent may be the 
> primary component of rhythm and meter, but it surely isn't the only 
> one.  Unfortunately we really don't have any good way to "scan" these 
> other variables.
>
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-- 
Tad Richards
http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
http://opusforty.blogspot.com/

The moral is this: in American verse,
The better you are, the pay is worse.
  --Corey Ford

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