[New-Poetry] Scanned

[David Graham]

I've never seen the experts agree on *any* specific scansion, I don't  
think.  Which doesn't mean it's utterly arbitrary:  if someone calls  
a 5 syllable foot an iamb they're just wrong.  But there is so much  
disagreement about allowable substitutions (how loose is too loose);  
what individual ears hear as stress; matters of regional accents;  
changes of taste over time;  etc., that scansion often *seems* purely  
arbitrary.  Not to mention the many competing systems of gridding-out  
metrics. . . .

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David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu

Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz

Poetry Library:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
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On May 3, 2009, at 12:02 PM, Chris Lott wrote:

> I'm curious about this-- can our resident experts come to agreement on
> the scansion of Baer's poem? Or is the whole process really as
> arbitrary as it feels?
>
> c

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