how do you find the scantion of a poem?

Question

I have so much trouble with it, and I have a project involving it due by friday.

Answer 1

Say the poem out loud. Listen for the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. Some of the syllables in the poem will be longer and louder; these are stressed. Most people can hear these without too much trouble but you can also try clapping along. If you clap only once per word you will tend to clap on the stressed syllable. You can also look up the words in the dictionary; most of the time dictionaries have marks that indicate which syllable of a word is stressed.

After you have determined the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in the poem, match it with patterns you already know, such as iambic, trochaic, and so forth. Hopefully you learned these patterns in class. The second part of the name is a name for how many syllables there are in a line. For example, Shakespeare's sonnets usually have five iambs per line, so they are written in iambic pentameter ("penta" means five).

Sometimes a poem will depart from its own pattern once in a while. But look at the general pattern over the whole poem and you should be able to figure it out.

Have fun!

Answer 2

Try these websites
http://www.poemtree.com/articles/Scansion.htm

http://homepage.mac.com/ericmacknight/Meter-Scansion.pdf

http://suberic.net/~marc/scansion.html

http://server.riverdale.k12.or.us/~bblack/meter.html