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Knowing how to work with scansion, whew, rocket fuel! Not all but many of the following examples are taken from Paul Fussell’s Poetic Meter & Poetic Form and John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction. The former is fairly technical, but serious fiction writers will find the chapter on scansion worth the price of the book. As for The Art of Fiction, the bit on scansion is an itsy bitsy bit, however, I consider Gardner required reading for any aspiring fiction writer. I read The Art of Fiction so many times that my copy fell to pieces and I had to buy another. Nonetheless, over the years, many of my writing students have told me, and oftentimes bitterly, that they found Gardner’s tone so arrogant as to induce a writing block! So you have that caveat. (But if Gardner’s arrogant tone is all it takes to induce a writing block…. hmmm… that will be another post.)
Scansion = representation of poetic rhythms by visual symbols
̆ = unstressed syllable
/ = stressed syllable
Because scansion marks are difficult to insert in this program, where we would expect to find a “/” above a stressed syllable, I have underlined that syllable instead and left the unstressed syllables unmarked.
Favors to none, to all she smiles extends;
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
If this is wigging you out already, trust me, there’s nothing too complicated about this. As you read a line aloud, just notice which syllables naturally sound a little stronger and maybe a little louder? Those are your stressed syllables. Everything else, those would be unstressed. And yes, sometimes some syllables can be stressed or unstressed depending on how you choose to read it. There are gray areas aplenty. La de da.
To slow down, make it heavy:
For this, following Fussell, you’ll want “a succession of stressed syllables without the expected intervening unstressed syllables” – for example:
When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw
The line too labours, and the words move slow
To go fast, lightly, and/or easily:
Here what works, says Fussell, is “a succession of unstressed syllables without the intervening stressed syllables” – for example:
Ripple on the surface of the water –
were salmon passing under – different
from the ripples caused by breezes
– Gary Snyder “Ripples on the Surface”
Mirror the rhythm:
“all the waves of the billows of the sea” — H Melville, Moby Dick
To show something sudden / different / new:
Fussell: “an unanticipated reversal in rhythm”– for example:
The pig thrashed and squealed, then, panting, trembling, lay helpless.
–John Gardner, The Art of Fiction
No scansion marks on the following. Try reading these aloud, listening carefully for for rhythms and the changes in rhythm– they will be obvious to your ear.
…the roller coaster’s track dips and curves like a barn swallow. Just now, a train full of flushed riders climbs, swerves, tilts on its side, then plunges on the rail’s fixed flight through the park…
–Lynda McDonnell, “Veblen and the Mall of America”
I could not bear upper Madison Avenue on weekday mornings… because I would see women walking Yorkshire terriers and shopping at Gristede’s, and some Veblenesque gorge would rise in my throat.
–Joan Didion, “Goodbye to All That”
Gorge! Well!
To conclude, here is an old poem with especially clear and energetic rhythms. Note the stressed and unstressed syllables:
THE FAIRIES
by
William Allingham
W.B. Yeats, ed., Fairy & Folk Tales of Ireland
Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap
And white owl’s feather!
As you revise the draft of your short story or novel, and especially as you put your eye on crucial descriptions and/or actions, or lines of dialogue, see if by marking the stressed and unstressed syllables, you can identify where the rhythms work well and where your text might be rearranged or rewritten to make the rhythms more apt, which is to say, more congruent with what you mean to show, and thereby more vivid for your reader.
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