SCANSION

A metrical line ending at a grammatical boundary or break—such as a dash or closing parenthesis—or with punctuation such as a colon, a semicolon, or a period. A line is considered end-stopped, too, if it contains a complete phrase. Many of Alexander Pope’s couplets are end-stopped, as in this passage from “An Essay on Man: Epistle I”:

Enjambment (pron. injámment): incomplete syntax at the end of the line. In the following example, the string what thou and I is looking for a verb to complete it, but the line-ending interrupts the onward pressure of the syntax, creating a kind of tension that is released when the verb is encountered at the beginning of the next line:

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I »
Did, till we lovd? Were we not weand till then?
(John Donne, The Good-morrow)

The word or phrase that completes the syntax and releases the tension is called the rejet (underlined in these examples): where the rejet is brief, as in the Donne example, the release is energetic, b…

Terms related to the format of a poem

For information about different forms of poetry, click here.

cadence		heroic couplet	line	run-on line
couplet	end-stopped line	inversion	line break	stanza	triplet

Line – A row of words.

Line break - where a line of poetry ends; may be end-stopped or not; when written out in a piece of prose, a virgule is used to indicate the line break.

End-stopped line – a line of poetry in which the punctuation naturally occurs at the end of the line **

 Run-on line – a line of poetry in which the punctuation is not contained within the line, and the line breaks without being punctuated **

 ** When reading a poem aloud, one should read to the punctuation; that is, do not pause or stop at the end of a line unless there is punctuation.

Stanza – a group of lines in a poem; analogous to a paragraph in prose writing.

 Couplet – two lines of rhymed poetry with the same meter that are next to each other within a larger poem.  Also called a distitch.

 Heroic couplet – Two rhymed lines of end-stopped iambic pentameter.     

 Triplet – A three-line stanza with a single rhyme.

                Ex: I know that you think

                       That hockey may stink,

                     But how ‘bout that rink?

 Inversion – reversal of the normal order of words, for emphasis or because the rhyme or meter demands it.  Examples can easily be found in Shakespeare and from Yoda.

 Cadence – The rising and falling rhythmic flow of spoken language, resulting from the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. A poem has cadence when large parts of it have a "beat" or rhythm. - See "Feet, meter, and scansion" for more information

Poetry Terms: Meter and Musicality

By Melissa Donovan  

In a previous post, I shared some basic poetry terms. Now, let’s elaborate by exploring meter.

In poetry, meter is quite complex so for now we’re going to stick with the absolute basics and look at a few core poetry terms that relate to meter and musicality.

Musicality in poetry is the sum of many different elements, all of which are also found in (you guessed it) music. The two basic musical components of a poem are rhythm and meter. These two poetry terms are inherently tied together and are often used interchangeably. However, they refer to completely different aspects of a poem’s musical tone.

Rhythm is motion, the overall flow of a piece as a whole. Meter, on the other hand, is the pattern of recurring accent that we can tap our feet to, the beat.

Rhythm = flow
Meter = pattern

Let’s take a closer look at meter

A Very Short Song

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.

-Dorothy Parker

Scansion

Do you remember diagramming sentences back in grammar school? Well, we can do something similar with poetry, only we are diagramming for meter. This is called scansion. Scanning a poem helps us better understand its meter, rhythm, and become a more prolific reader of poetry and writer of all things.

Feet

Meter is measured in units called feet. These are not the same feet we use here in the U.S. to measure distance. In poetry, a metrical foot consists of one accented syllable plus one or two unaccented syllables. Below are some metrical examples. The syllables in all caps are the accented syllables.

da-DUM da-DUM is an example of two iambs or iambic meters
DA de DA de is an example of two trochees or trochaic meters
ra-ta-TAH is an anapest or anapestic meter
LA-da-da is a dactyl or dactylic meter
BOMP-BOMP is a spondee or spondaic meter

To start scanning a poem, we first identify the prevailing foot. We’ll use bold to denote the accented syllables.

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Note that some accents are heavier than others, but all are equal in scansion marking. For example, in the first line, the word I is not stressed nearly as much as the words once, young, and true. If you match up the accent pattern shown in this example to the types of feet defined above, you’ll probably align most of it with trochee: DA de DA de. However, the final line in this stanza has a different meter: da-DUM da-DUM. So the last line is iambic meter.

Metrical Variation and Truncation

The next step in scansion is to determine how many feet are in each line.

Once, when I was young and true, trochee 4 feet
Someone left me sad- trochee 3 feet
Broke my brittle heart in two; trochee 4 feet
And that is very bad. iamb 3 feet

You’ll notice that the feet in the first three lines seem incomplete. When a poet deviates from any pattern, it is called metrical variation. In this particular example, we would have expected the accented words true, sad, and two to be followed by an unaccented syllable. Omitting an unaccented syllable, affecting an incomplete foot, is called truncation.

Line Lengths

Just like there are words that define the types of feet, there are also words that name different lengths of line:

monometer 1 foot
dimeter 2 feet
trimeter 3 feet
tetrameter 4 feet
pentameter 5 feet
hexameter 6 feet

Now, we can go in and replace our foot counts with proper words :

Once, when I was young and true, trochaic tetrameter (truncated)
Someone left me sad- trochaic trimeter (truncated)
Broke my brittle heart in two; trochaic tetrameter (truncated)
And that is very bad. iambic trimeter

Overall, the poem is written in truncated trochaic tetrameter with frequent metrical variations to trochaic trimeter and iambic trimeter. Wow, that sentence makes me sound pretty damn smart!

If you’re still reading at this point, can I just say I love you? Kindred spirits in poetry unite!

Lots of Poetry Terms

Meter is a tricky subject and this group of poetry terms only scratches the surface. Entire volumes have been written on this topic. I personally find it interesting to study, otherwise I would not have spent upwards of four hours researching and writing this post for you fine poetry loving folks.

There are a few more things to note about meter:

• The rules are not so hard and fast that you could not read this poem and come up with different results in a metrical scan of your own. In some cases, meters and feet are subjective.
• Meter is not always easy to scan. It took quite a search to find one simple, short poem that would lend itself well to this exercise.
• Meter is no indication of poetic skill. Many novice poets write in strict meter and plenty of advanced poets write in meter so complex, it is practically impossible to scan at all.