![]() It literally saved our lives and her peace of mind because it was a physical as well as cerebral activity. Scansion is the action of scanning a line or verse to determine its rhythm. So, Miss Buchanan introduced her uninterested brood to the art of scansion. Without this lesson whether it be considered archaic and obscure then and now, I would not have found my passion for all things poetic. Every one in class knew that Latin was a dead language and so it goes with out saying that the Illiad and the Odyssey were Greek poems translated into Latin just for us poor children in the urban concrete jungle. Students who were not as excited about Latin or Homer and his writings. ![]() She stood tall, her lanky body straight as she stood in front of the zealous students. Miss Buchanan was a angular faced woman with red hair she worn in a tight bun on the top of her head. Everybody knows that Shakespeare used iambic pentameter in most of his plays and sonnets. Pope most likely translated it into this meter because it was the type of metric line used in English poetry or verse drama. Alexander Pope translated both epic poems into iambic pentameter which resembles the rhythm of a human heartbeat. Dactyllic hexameter represents the meter or rhythm of these two epic poems in a long syllable and two short syllables. In a classroom of over thirty students, this knowledge did little to help me with reading and translating Homer's The Illiad and The Odyssey, two epic poems in dactyllic hexameter. As a unsuspecting resident of a city housing project, I was already familiar with Latin because I was a Catholic. She was faced with the challenge 0f teaching inner city middle school students the dead language of Latin. Over four decades ago, Nellie Buchanan had the weight on her shoulders.
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