Scanning Your Poems:
When the Rhythm Is Wrong

You've written your rhyming poem, and every rhyme is perfect. It zips, it sings, it wings. But then you show it to your critique group, and they say the rhythm's off, that something's not working. Where do you go from here?

Rhyming poems are really difficult to write, because in our efforts to get the rhyme just right, we often mess up the rhythm or meter of our poem. And we might not see it happening.

Because I'm a good oral reader, I can take verse that doesn't have perfect meter and read it as if it does. Without even realizing it. This, of course, gets me into big trouble, because when someone who doesn't know what the rhythm is supposed to be reads it, the tongue trips over the awkward spots, and the poem is ruined.

One thing that can help is to scan your poem. This is where you mark all the accented and unaccented beats to see the pattern (hopefully) that you've created.

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