Scanning Is Important After All
"The value of scansion is not in mechanically showing the understructure that it exposes but in the access that it can provide to the poem's tone" (Hamilton 205).
OH! This is why we scan poetry! I thought it was just something that English majors did because they could and I thought that poets wrote with certain stressed and unstressed syllables to follow a pattern. Now I understand WHY we scan poetry and WHY poets write with syllables in mind. It is another device to create tone. Not just a silly compilation of words whose syllables follow patterns, but a technique that is actually effective.
OH! This is why we scan poetry! I thought it was just something that English majors did because they could and I thought that poets wrote with certain stressed and unstressed syllables to follow a pattern. Now I understand WHY we scan poetry and WHY poets write with syllables in mind. It is another device to create tone. Not just a silly compilation of words whose syllables follow patterns, but a technique that is actually effective.
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Yup, think about the way someone makes a sarcastic remark. They emphasize certain words to make a point and so that you know not to take what they are saying literally.