Poemcasting involves our felt attention to regular patterns of rhythm in language (Meters). In matriarchal, earth-centered cultures across the world, meters are honored ceremonially for their ability to change energy, help us learn and remember, cast spells, heal hearts, souls, and bodies, and guide us into sacred consciousness and timeless time. Even the etymological root of the word Meter, related to the word for Mother in proto-Indo-European language, shows the divine feminine nature of the craft that we practice in Poemcasting.

Any meter, in its essential nature, expresses and reveals the root mystery where right and left brain, music and thought, conscious and unconscious, touch. Each Meter bears its own distinctive news of the primal depth of our experience of language’s meaningfulness, that fulcrum of mystery on which the weight of our humanity rests.

A WHAT & HOW OF SCANSION

Scansion is the art of marking/recognizing patterns in rhythmical language, revealing the magical presence of Meters within the words. All language has rhythms and can be scanned in some way. But when language is opened fully to the momentum of regular, intentional Meters, the art of scansion can become not only a sensual pleasure, but a sacred art. Scansion is (along with dancing) one of the most attentive and reverent ways with which to open ourselves to the magical energy patterns that weave throughout our words.

Until the advent of free verse about a hundred years ago, poetic rhythm was so familiar in our bodies that scansion may not have been necessary. But now, it’s a central tool for those of us who are serious about reclaiming the power of rhythmic language in our current world. Scansion can be a first step to navigating our way back into the body familiarity that guides much of the wisdom of oral-based, earth-centered societies.  Here are some of the basics (Hungry for more? You’ll find the most depth & detail devoted to meters & scansion in the Formal Feeling Workshops!).

THE 3 BASIC SCANSION TOOLS

  /   WAND

Marked above a stressed syllable—one that is louder, longer, and/or higher pitched than those immediately adjacent to it.

 u   CUP

Marked above an unstressed syllable—one that is softer, shorter, and/or lower pitched than those immediately adjacent to it.

  |   EDGE

Marked between (not above) groups of syllables. It indicates a footbreak—a division between repeating rhythmic units (commonly called “feet”), that are built on the same basic pattern of wands and cups.

THE 3-STEP SCANSION METHOD

(I learned this from Penelope Laurans, who learned it from Robert Fitzgerald)

1. Mark the wands
2. Mark the cups
3. Look for repeating patterns (“feet”) and mark the boundaries between them with edges
4. Name the line.

EXAMPLE

The sentence “It’s raining and I call your name” would be scanned this way:

STEP 1 Mark the wands

        /            /         /               /
It’s raining and I call your name.

(Note: “I” may feel like a stronger syllable than “and,” but if you SAY IT ALOUD (the most important practice in scansion!) you will notice that “and” needs to be spoken more strongly than “I.” Imagine shouting it to someone across a room to feel the difference. (Note 1: On a deeper level, if you are wondering how a small word like “and” can sound strong enough for a wand, the answer is that stress is relative: we hear a stress’s power relative to what’s around it. Because of the strength of the verb “call,” the “I” gets softer by comparison, and the “and” ends up being stronger than the two syllables next to it. Note 2: If you are wondering, “but what if I want to emphasize it differently? What if I want to stress the “I” because it is I, and not another person, who is calling?,” the answer is yes, you can do that (it’s called “performative stress”), but a reader seeing it on the page would not know you were doing it unless you changed the meter to make it happen. If you’d like to learn more about this, you’ll find it discussed in my book A Poet’s Ear.)

STEP 2 Next, add the cups

u      /     u     /   u    /    u         /
It’s raining and I call your name.

Usually, a cup goes over each unwanded sylllable.

STEP 3 Finally, listen for repeating patterns and mark the edges

u       / |   u    / | u  / |  u        /
It’s raining and I call your name.

Looking for patterns, you will notice repetition: cup-wand-cup-wand-cup-wand etc.. Add the edges between them. If you are using a pen and paper, it helps to extend the edge right down between or through the words as needed.

3 LESS COMMON SCANSION TOOLS

\ HALF- WAND

Optional mark to indicate a stress whose intensity falls between a wand and a cup:

  u     /   |   \    / |u   / |  u        /
The rain falls as I call your name

(u) GHOST CUP

Used to indicate something at the beginning or end of a line that doesn’t fit the expected pattern: either a missing cup at the beginning or end of a line, or an extra cup at the beginning or end of a line–But we still feel/hear the implied full pattern.

/    u |  /  u  |   /   u    |   /   (u )
Tyger, tyger, burning bright

If two syllables are missing, use a double ghost cup (uu).

# REST

Used to indicate a missing cup— a pause— in the middle of a line, where a ghost cup would be hard to see among the scansion marks:

u       /    |  \ # | u   / |   u      /  
The rain falls.  I call your name

THAT’S IT

Now you know all you need to scan our magical Meters in Poemcasting!