This document provides instruction on analyzing poetry through scansion and identifying formal elements. It begins with defining scansion as describing poetry's rhythms by dividing lines into feet and marking stressed and unstressed syllables. The document then provides a step-by-step process for scanning a poem, including reading it aloud, marking stresses, identifying the meter, counting feet, and determining the rhyme scheme. It analyzes Theodore Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz" as an example, identifying its iambic trimeter meter and abab rhyme scheme. Students are then assigned to scan and analyze the form of one additional poem.

1. Doctor Doctor

2.  Review: Formal Elements of Writing
 Group Activity “My Papa’s Waltz”
and “My Papa’s Waltz: A New Critical
Approach.
 Group Work: Identify and discuss
qualities of New Criticism as they are
(or are not) applied in this essay.
Provide specific examples from the
essay, the poem, or the
definition/description of New
Criticism.
 Scanning Poetry: An Individual
Endeavor

3. Take five minutes to discuss
the formal elements of writing
that we covered last week.

4. 1. a situation or statement which seems impossible or is difficult
to understand because it contains two opposite facts or
characteristics;
2. a statement or idea that contradicts itself;
3. a person who has qualities that are contradictory;
4. something that conflicts with common opinion or belief

5. Irony, in its simple form, means a
statement or event undermined by
the context in which it occurs. Irony
involves a difference or contrast
between appearance and reality.
Irony exposes and underscores a
contrast between
• A. what is and what seems to be
• B. what is and what ought to be
• C. what is and what one wishes to
be
• D. what is and what one expects
to be

6. Ambiguity occurs when a word, image, or event
generates two or more different meanings.

7.  Finally, the complexity of a literary text is created by
its tension, which, broadly defined, means the linking
together of opposites. In its simplest form, tension is
created by the integration of the abstract and the
concrete, of general ideas embodied in specific
images.

8. An image
 consists of a word or words that refer to an object perceived by the
senses or to sense perceptions themselves: colors, shapes, lighting,
sounds, tastes, smells, textures, temperatures, and so on. Clouds can
suggest both weather and a depressed mood.
A symbol
 is an image that has both literal and figurative meaning, a concrete
universal, such as the swamp in Ernest Hemingway’s “Big, Two-
Hearted River.” The swamp is a literal swamp, but it also “stands for,”
or “figures,” something else: the emotional problems of the
protagonist.
A metaphor
 is a comparison of two dissimilar objects in which the properties of
one are ascribed to the other. For example, the phrase “my brother is
a gem” is a metaphor. Obviously, it has no literal meaning. To get
from metaphor to simile requires one small step: add like or as:
“my brother is like a gem.”

9. Alliteration
 The repetition of initial stressed, consonant sounds in a series
of words within a phrase or verse line. Alliteration need not
reuse all initial consonants; “pizza” and “place” alliterate.
Example: “We saw the sea sound sing, we heard the salt sheet
tell,” from Dylan Thomas’s “Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed.”
Browse poems with alliteration.
Hyperbole
 A figure of speech composed of a striking exaggeration. For
example, see James Tate’s lines “She scorched you with her
radiance” or “He was more wronged than Job.” Hyperbole
usually carries the force of strong emotion, as in Andrew
Marvell’s description of a forlorn lover:
Personification
 A figure of speech in which the poet describes an abstraction, a
thing, or a nonhuman form as if it were a person. William
Blake’s “O Rose, thou art sick!” is one example; Donne’s
“Death, be not proud” is another.

10.  Discuss the poem, “My Papa’s
Waltz” and the essay, “My Papa’s
Waltz: A New Critical Approach.”
 Identify and discuss qualities of
New Criticism as it is applied in
this essay. Provide specific
examples from the essay, the
poem, or the
definition/description of New
Criticism.

12.  rhyme: a repetition of similar sounds in two
or more words, most often at the end of
lines in poems and songs.
 rhythm: the pattern of stressed and
unstressed syllables in a line.
 meter: the number of feet in a line.
 scansion: Describing the rhythms of poetry
by dividing the lines into feet, marking the
locations of stressed and unstressed
syllables.

14. 1. Read the poem aloud. As you read, listen for a natural
emphasis in the rhythm of the line. Count the number of
syllables in each line, and write that number at the end
of the line. Let’s do the first stanza together.
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
Do you see a pattern in the
number of syllables? Do you hear
the rhythm of the poem?

15. 2. As you read the poem aloud, try tapping your foot or
pounding your hand on a desk when you hear the
accented syllables. This will help you to hear the rhythm.
The syllables you emphasize will be those that you'll
mark with a / (indicating a stressed syllable). If you can't
hear the rhythm try reading the lines to someone and
asking that person to mark the stressed syllables, or,
conversely, ask someone to read the poem and mark the
lines as you listen to them.
3. Read more than one line. Sometimes the first line of a
poem may have spondees or other types of feet that will
throw off your reading. Remember, you are looking for
the predominant metrical pattern of the piece.
4. Mark the stressed syllables first, and
then go back and mark the unstressed
syllables. The mark for these is a breve,
which looks like a sideways parenthesis
mark or shallow "u."

16. 5. If you are not sure which
syllables should be stressed,
look for two- and three-
syllable words in a line and
pronounce them as you
would normally pronounce
them. These will help you to
determine the stressed
syllables in a line. For
example, you'd say aBOVE,
not Above, MURmuring, not
murMURing or murmurING.
6. Try breaking the words
into syllables so that you can
see them individually
instead of as part of a word.
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

17. u / u u / /
The whiskey on your breath 6
syllables
u / u / / / u
Could make a small boy dizzy; 7
syllables
u / / u / /
But I hung on like death: 6 syllables
u / u u / / u
Such waltzing was not easy. 7 syllables

18. The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

19. 7. Once you have marked the lines for stressed and
unstressed syllables, divide the lines according to the
kinds of feet. (Use a larger / slash mark or circle the feet.):
unstressed STRESSED = iambic (sounds like da-DUM:
de-TROIT)
8. Once you're finished with that, determine the
meter of the poem:
 iamb (unstressed-stressed u/)
 trochee (stressed-unstressed /u)
 anapest (unstressed-unstressed-stressed uu/)
 dactyl (stressed-unstressed-unstressed /uu)
 spondee (stressed-stressed //)
 pyrrhic (unstressed-unstressed uu).

20. 9. Count the number of feet:
 Monometer (one foot)
 Dimeter (two feet)
 Trimeter (three feet)
 Tetrameter (four feet)
 Pentameter (five feet)
 Hexameter (six feet).
10. Put the type of foot together with the
number of feet, and you've identified
the meter.

21. Dominant foot: iamb (unstressed-stressed u/), trochee
(stressed-unstressed /u), anapest (unstressed-unstressed-
stressed uu/), dactyl (stressed-unstressed-unstressed /uu),
spondee (stressed-stressed //) or pyrrhic (unstressed-
unstressed uu).
Number of feet per line: Monometer (one foot), Dimeter (two
feet), Trimeter (three feet), Tetrameter (four feet), Pentameter (five
feet), or Hexameter (six feet).
Prevailing meter (dominant foot + number of feet per
line):
Structure: (kind of stanza): couplets, triplets, quatrain,
sestet
Rhyme scheme: aa bb cc or abab or none?

22. u / u u / /
The whiskey on your breath 6
u / u / / /u
Could make a small boy dizzy; 7
u / / u / /
But I hung on like death: 6
u / u u / /u
Such waltzing was not easy. 7
u / u / u /
We romped until the pans 6
/ u u / u /
Slid from the kitchen shelf; 6
u / u / u u
My mother’s countenance 6
u / u / u /
Could not unfrown itself. 6
u / u / u /
The hand that held my wrist 3
u / u u / / u
Was battered on one knuckle; 3.5
u / u / u /
At every step you missed 3
u / / / u / u
My right ear scraped a buckle 3.5
u / / u u /
You beat time on my head
u u / / / u /
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
u / u / u /
Then waltzed me off to bed
/ / u / u /
Still clinging to your shirt.
a
b
a
b
c
d
c
d
e
f
e
f
g
h
g
h
Four line stanzas are
called quatrains
Feet per lineSyllables per line

23. Dominant foot: iamb
Number of feet per line: three
Prevailing meter (dominant foot + number of feet per
line): iambic trimeter
Structure: quatrain
Rhyme scheme: abab (imperfect, partial, near or slant
rhyme)
// cdc (imperfect) d // efef // ghgh

24. READ
• “The Fish”
• “A Black Rook in Rainy Weather”
• “Memories of West Street and
Lepke”
• “To His Coy Mistress”
 Choose one poem to scan (meter
and rhyme) like we did in class
today,
 POST # 3: summarize the form
(see the slideshow for help).
 Choose two you might want to
write about. Print them both and
bring them to class.