[New-Poetry] Scanned

[Rsgwynn1 at cs.com]

In a message dated 5/3/2009 12:12:33 PM Central Daylight Time, 
grahamd at ripon.edu writes: 
> '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. . . .
I just refuse to get into arguments about scansion.  It's a silly practice 
anyway, trying to give some kind of poor visual equivalent of what we should 
hear.  Yes, I teach it to my students, but I make them listen first.
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