Monday, May 5, 2008

Pencil It In

You gotta scan it yourself, if you're going to learn traditional verse. There are too many little ins and outs involved not to. Yes, it's great to have that pamphlet (forget what it was called) that gives you an overview of the different meters and such. But there's no replacement for scanning poem after poem yourself -- sort of like going to the gallery and learning painting from the masters.

What I used as a scanning text was my old Norton anthology from Poetry 101 (or whatever the course was called) -- a nice fat book, nice clear print with enough linear spacing to pencil-in (lightly!) your scans, and widely available. I owned the book, it wasn't going to anyone else, and there was no need to feel I was destroying posterity. The book was a teaching tool to start with, and I was just using it for some personal extended homework.

It was extended, all right. I ended up scanning (and analyzing) in pencil every poem in that edition (the seventh, maybe?) that rhymed or was in blank verse. From (Philip) Sidney to (Cecil Day-) Lewis.

I'll go into what I did in more detail later. But first, friends, choose your scanning text carefully -- please.

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