02-14-2015, 03:43 PM
Hi starsman -- the short answer is no. Not entirely. Well, sometimes it does. A bit. There's no short answer. Scansion, meter, all of this jazz takes a lot of trial and error and a fair bit of arguing/consensus/pointing out inconsistencies/punching milo in the face/calling Leanne a whore/drinking wine/throwing up wine/crying yourself to death. It's the best carnival ride in the world.
If a word is alone on a line, e.g. if you were writing in monometer and you used the word 'fallen', then only the meter of that one word would matter -- and it would invariably be 'FALLen', a trochee. I can't actually imagine a scenario in which it would stress the second syllable, but that's not true of every word, so the best thing is to look at the line as a whole and not necessarily the words. If you get stuck on looking at how words are pronounced, you end up forgetting that meter isn't about words, but about stresses of individual syllables in concert. The only foolproof way I've ever found -- and I've tried many, having been several different kinds of fool -- is to get the meter fixed in your head FIRST, and then fit the words into it. If you have to change the way that you would naturally pronounce a word to fit the meter, it doesn't fit the meter. Hope this is reasonably clear -- but in truth, the best way of all is to try and fail, then fix it until you need to fix it less frequently.
If a word is alone on a line, e.g. if you were writing in monometer and you used the word 'fallen', then only the meter of that one word would matter -- and it would invariably be 'FALLen', a trochee. I can't actually imagine a scenario in which it would stress the second syllable, but that's not true of every word, so the best thing is to look at the line as a whole and not necessarily the words. If you get stuck on looking at how words are pronounced, you end up forgetting that meter isn't about words, but about stresses of individual syllables in concert. The only foolproof way I've ever found -- and I've tried many, having been several different kinds of fool -- is to get the meter fixed in your head FIRST, and then fit the words into it. If you have to change the way that you would naturally pronounce a word to fit the meter, it doesn't fit the meter. Hope this is reasonably clear -- but in truth, the best way of all is to try and fail, then fix it until you need to fix it less frequently.
It could be worse