I keep debating with myself as to whether or not the third foot of this line is a spondee or an iamb.

Some time/ too hot/ the eye/ of heav/ en shines,Īnd of/ ten is/ his gold/ com plex/ ion dimmed, Rough winds/ do shake/ the dar/ ling buds/ of May,Īnd sum/ mer’s lease/ hath all/ too short/ a date: The last foot reads to me like a pyrrhic (two unstressed syllables in a row), though it’s said that pyrrhics usually only exist in a spondee/pyrrhic pattern, so technically, I guess the stress can fall on the final syllable of the last foot, but reading it that way sounds kind of fake and forced to me. Thou art/ more love/ ly and/ more temp/ erate: Certainly, I can read it as iambic pentameter, but it’s forcing it a little I don’t read the syllables falling naturally into that pattern. So, from a pure scansion standpoint, this line is a mess. I came up with Spondee/Iamb/Trochee/Iamb/Iamb Right off the bat, the poem doesn’t scan iambic. Shall I/ com pare/ thee to/ a sum/ mer’s day? One of the myths surrounding Shakespeare’s writing is that everything he wrote was in perfect iambic pentameter, especially the sonnets (this particular form is named for him, after all), but does it really work? Based on my own reading of the poem out loud to myself, without paying attention to what the scansion should be, this is how I scanned it: To help clarify my point, I’ll scan Shakespeare’s Sonnet XVIII, which is one of his most famous. So, for example, if you’re writing a metered line and you’re reading the word “desire” as “ desire” just to make it fit, then you’re forcing the scansion instead of letting it work naturally. If you place the stress on the wrong syllables to make the lines scan, then it’s not working. What I mean is that an iamb is a heartbeat - ba-DUM - and there are many words and phrases that are iambic (oddly enough, the word “iamb” is not one of them - it’s a trochee), and when scanning a line of poetry, the natural rise and fall of the syllables is what counts.

(I suppose we have to give the word “amazing” a limited definition in this context.) But I have found since then that when I read metrical writing, I scan things in my head, and if I were to be a stickler, I’d say that there are an awful lot of poems out there that, in terms of scansion, aren’t true sonnets.

It was surprisingly difficult, mainly because it’s amazing how often we try to force words to scan the way we think they ought to, instead of using words that fit naturally within the flow. It was a pass/fail assignment - it either was 14 lines of iambic pentameter or it wasn’t. Like many good English majors, I had to study forms of poetic meter in school, and the most telling exercise (I still think about it) was having to write a perfect Elizabethan sonnet. (What can I say? It was a nice break from the usual posting about truly important things like underwear and cramps.) I don’t claim to be an expert on this subject by any stretch of the imagination, even though many long years ago, I wrote an article for LitKicks about villanelles, sonnets and meter, (appropriately titled “Villanelles, Sonnets and Meter”) but it is something that fascinates me. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post on my blog about metrical poetry, specifically, the line in Romeo and Juliet, “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” and how the scansion of the line could support the meaning of the words.

Definition of scansion