Scansion is when you scan (hah) a few lines of a poem and break each down to feet, according to stress patterns, which is supposedly possible because English is a stress-timed language. Never mind that the thing is a bit of a scam, unless the poet is really regular with their meter, and reads it like you'd read words... normally. Which a lot of times poets do not. But hey, it's on the exam, so we review it.
PS. A feminine ending is when you finish a line on an unfinished foot with an unstressed syllable (which is hard to do, because you tend to stress the last word even when it's). Not sexist at all.
PS2. Graphs taken from Mary Oliver's "The Line" (from A Poetry Handbook).
PS2. Graphs taken from Mary Oliver's "The Line" (from A Poetry Handbook).
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