Scansion Mansion

Posting Guidelines

Are your rhymes wrenched? Your ends stopped? Does your rhythm have no spring? Hightail it to this stress-filled forum for metrical poetry. (Note: Metrics are welcome anywhere at the PFFA, but will receive special scrutiny here. Beginners welcome.)

Before you consider posting, please read these guidelines in full:

Welcome to the Scansion Mansion at the Poetry Free For All. Wipe your feet, take your shoes off, don't get any cracker crumbs on the couch. This is a mansion, not a bachelor pad. Remember that.

It's rather appropriate that the forum with the most rules is, in fact, the forum for formal, metrical poetry. The Scansion Mansion has three sets of applicable rules, which we suggest you read carefully before posting: The Posting Guidelines, mama of all guidelines; the General C&C Guidelines, to which the Scansion Mansion is comparable; and the Scansion Mansion guidelines below:

Metrical poetry tends to scare the bejeezus out of people, including those who feel very comfortable writing free verse. They panic, they feel incapable of commenting, they run scared when presented with constructive criticism.

1. Please don't do that. We expect people to be new to metrics. We also expect, however, that they be open to learning about metrical poetry, open to accepting critique, and open to looking at metrical poetry with a critical eye and an honest attempt to critique 3 poems for every one they post. That's right: the 3 to 1 rule still applies here.

2. No syllabics allowed. Sorry. Haiku can take a hike. Tankas tank here. Although some people consider them technically metrical, the overwhelming consensus amongst the moderators of SM is that they are not. So, take 'em over to General C&C instead, please.

3. If you post a poem to the Scansion Mansion, and the moderators are literally incapable of seeing any way that the poem could be considered metrical, the moderators reserve the right to move it to another, non-metrical forum, such as General or General C&C.

To get you started, I would recommend you take a gander at the following ducky metric offerings:

We hope you've enjoyed these guidelines. To continue, click the link below:

I have read and understood the rules for posting in Scansion Mansion
and am now eager to wobble iambically into its metrical ballroom.