Joseph Powell and Mark Halperin begin by describing strategies for understanding what "accent" is and move to a step-by-step analysis of examples. Once students feel confident about the basics, they can find additional sections that go deeper into topics like the meter around us every day, varieties of metrical lines, stanza forms, and the sometimes-confusing issues of variant pronunciations and sentimentality in poetry. A student essay on a contemporary poem demonstrates how meter and meaning can be brought together in an effective analysis.
The useful reference materials at the end include three glossaries, a bibliography, and an index, along with a special appendix of poems that lets students try their hands at scanning and then check their scansions.
While more detailed than introductory texts, _Accent on Meter_ does not assume prior knowledge; it is designed to supplement anthologies and texts used in introduction to poetry and creative writing classes. Teachers will find this introduction to meter user-friendly because the book offers a sequence of cases, examples, and strategies for teaching scansion in easy-to-read prose that acknowledges the ambiguity and difficulty of many poetic concepts and the fact that some lines can be scanned in more than one way. Written by two experienced teachers who are themselves widely published poets, _Accent on Meter_ will be an invaluable asset in any poetry classroom.
