If I were to ever teach a writing course, it would be in poetry. I would only teach it in spring and I would call it Slow Magic and I would begin it the way my first-ever poetry workshop started, with exercises in scansion and meter. I would ask my students to bring in their favorite sentences, and together we would write down each line by hand, counting and weighing the syllables of every word, marking their stresses in notation. I would ask us all to read out loud, carefully and deliberately to feel for the slow magic of each sentence. We’d determine if the feet were iambs or dactyls or trochees or spondees or my favorite kind, pyrrhic, which is double un-stressed, two short syllables like the beat of a drum.
slow magic
slow magic
slow magic
If I were to ever teach a writing course, it would be in poetry. I would only teach it in spring and I would call it Slow Magic and I would begin it the way my first-ever poetry workshop started, with exercises in scansion and meter. I would ask my students to bring in their favorite sentences, and together we would write down each line by hand, counting and weighing the syllables of every word, marking their stresses in notation. I would ask us all to read out loud, carefully and deliberately to feel for the slow magic of each sentence. We’d determine if the feet were iambs or dactyls or trochees or spondees or my favorite kind, pyrrhic, which is double un-stressed, two short syllables like the beat of a drum.