Writing Poetry, Scansion, and Rhyme
A number of years ago, I purchased a book entitled The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Poetry, written by Nikki Moustaki and published by Alpha Books. It has become an important reference book for me as I continue to hone my writing skills and tutor students in English and other writing classes. On page 104 of the book, Nikki includes a short course in scansion, a method that poets use to measure metrical patterns. She explains that a metrical foot is a unit of measure that measures the stresses in a line of poetry. For example, let's take the popular children's book by Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham. Two of the lines read: "I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them Sam-I-am." Both last words of these two sentences rhyme, am versus Sam. Also, notice that there are 8 syllables in each sentence. When you read the two sentences out loud, they flow quite nicely. Each line is composed of 4 iamb feet. Iambic means each foot is composed of one unstressed s