how to mark the meter of a poem and scan it ?

Question

Ive never learned anything of iambic and meters so when this was in the summer packet in my new school I got really nervous can anyone help break down how to scan a poem? the poem is if we must die by Claude Mckay but I'm more interested how to do the skill in the first place

Answer 1

iambic has to do with the "rhythm" of the writing. Something that is Iambic will have a "soft syllable-Hard syllable" pattern  (if you know anything about music it is actually more like off-beat on beat "& 1 & 2" ba-DUM ba-DUM)   the meter just refers to how many of these are in a line. For example Iambic pentameter refers to there being 5 of these groupings in a line so the rhythm pattern would be "da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM" and start again on the next line. When reading the poem to mark the meter you would figure out which syllables are stressed and which are unstressed and mark them accordingly typically the stressed symbol is either marked with a "/" or a line and the unstressed sound is marked by either an "x" or a "^" (accent mark). Hope this helps.