More on Scansion

The critical analysis portion of the midterm went very well but the scansion… eh, not so much.  Obviously, this isn't an exact science but here’s another crash-course.

Ignorance

by Joel Brouwer

The authors you haven't read are cooking over campfires in your backyard. They've pitched tents and dug a well. You knew they'd eventually come to haunt you in their frock coats and togas, wagging ink-stained fingers: shame, shame. But they don't seem irked: they sing as they peel potatoes, they've set up a volleyball net. You say / thought you'd be angry, which cracks them up. Hell no, they roar. Have some lunch! Your mind floods with the morphine of relief. Someone ladles you a plate of soup. You can see your face in there. You can see right through it.

The authors you haven't read are cooking over campfires in your backyard. They've pitched tents and dug a well. You knew they'd eventually come to haunt you in their frock coats and togas, wagging ink-stained fingers: shame, shame. But they don't seem irked: they sing as they peel potatoes, they've set up a volleyball net. You say I thought you'd be angry, which cracks them up. Hell no, they roar. Have some lunch! Your mind floods with the morphine of relief. Someone ladles you a plate of soup. You can see your face in there. You can see right through it.

Bold—what you’d stress (eh, probably).   

Italics—might stress, depending on context/reading style.

Compound words (backyard, someone, campfire) might have both syllables slightly stressed, since each syllable would be a word on its own.  Contrast that with words like author, cooking, morphine, etc.

Where the energy comes from: OK, obviously as a prose-poem, it isn’t gaining energy from line breaks, but it does gain energy from the format, i.e. the prose-poem structure might force you to read this a little faster and view this from the lens of a “traditional” short story (though in terms of content, it definitely isn’t).  Otherwise, the piece gains energy from the weird/imaginative scene, plus the use of more stressed than unstressed syllables (which might be why it sounds surreal but slightly creepy).