A Poetry Squawk
By Darius Stewart
Author of The Ghost the Night Becomes
Yes, I admit it, this is about one thing, and one thing only: I fail miserably at scansion. It’s one of the reasons I’m not a doctor: scansion is finite; the practice of medical science is finite. It’s why math and science detest me, and why the feeling is quite mutual. When I encounter anything remotely finite, I become finitely remote. For example, approach me with the idea of geometric proofs and word problems, or how measuring a line of verse as a method of inferring meaning in a poem, not to mention the inherent formalist’s tool for crafting it, and I will counter with:
“Give me ‘Things I Just Can’t Fucking Understand’ for a thousand, Alex.”
To me, these are concepts tantamount to mixing oil and water then using the mixture to fry an egg. Imagine that.
(Did I clarify that scansion is too finite for a free verse poet such as I . . . or is it me?)
Perhaps the underlying problem is that I find scansion counter-intuitive to understanding what a poem demands that I understand; whether it’s for the purposes of analysis or for construction, scanning a poem is like performing the Viennese waltz and instead of wedding oneself to the rhythms of the music, to the sweeping gestures, the glissandos of the feet dancing across the floor, one moves mechanically to the metronome: 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3 . . .
Much art a dancing robot makes not.
Poetry, as with most modern literary mediums, is robust and shape-shifting. In the face of traditional rule today’s poetry doesn’t just fly, but suggests alternatives to the status quo. So does this make me an illegitimate poet if I can’t correctly assign stressed and unstressed syllables in a line? What if, in trying to scan a poem, being from the South, I employ additions or subtractions to words because it’s customary to how we create language in this region? What inherent meaning is thereby lost due to inadequate arithmetic? Stressed, unstressed, I’m stressed.
Of course, I don’t intend to decry the merits of and necessity for scansion used formally to arrange and infer meaning. Even as a free verse poet, I still rely on scansion; only my usage is more akin to how a composer might score a variety of time signatures to subvert a predominate theme, thereby adding dimension and texture to a piece, not to mention eliciting a variety of emotional responses.
(Maybe I should become a composer. I’ve always loved syncopation. Though, ironically, I find jazz composition to be too formally informal.)
What it all means is I can do without restricting myself to purisms. For some poets, scansion and other formalities are the lifeblood of their work. Verse isn’t verse unless it’s attuned to its metrical implications. I’d rather make up my own rules just to see what I didn’t know I could create. If a bit of self-consciously metrical passages bebop their way into the poem, then so be it; I’m still a free verser—kind of like how I can still do the robot, but I don’t dance like one.
Darius Stewart is the author of The Terribly Beautiful (2006) and Sotto Voce (2008), each of which was an Editor’s Choice Selection in the Main Street Rag Poetry Chapbook Series, as well as The Ghost the Night Becomes (2014), winner of the 2013 Gertrude Press Poetry Chapbook Prize. Other poems and prose appear widely in literary journals and anthologies. He is a former James A. Michener Fellow in poetry, receiving the M.F.A. degree from The University of Texas at Austin. Presently, he resides in Knoxville, Tenn., with his dog, Phillip J. “Fry.”