Poetic Forms: Cinquain
@belindayhughes (1096)
United States
March 6, 2013 12:03am CST
The cinquain, created by Adelaide Crapsey, is somewhat of an American cousin to the Japanese haiku form. Crapsey's initial form of the cinquain consists of five lines of sequentially increasing stresses, which end abruptly with a single stress on the fifth line. The title itself is significant and must be chosen with care, depicting a season, place or hour. The subsequent lines are a subject noun, two adjectives, three action verbs, a complete sentence and a synonym for line one, respectively.
In a cinquain, you don't just blithely describe your subject. You create an experience of it. The cinquain is for serious poets and those who enjoy writing about nature and want to stretch their wings a bit. There is even a journal devoted to the cinquain form: Amaze: the Cinquain Journal, which is available online.
Here's an example of a cinquain:
Waning Crescent
Darkness
Dim lunescence
Waiting, watching, warming
My seed potatoes lie leafing.
Drape
1 response
@wolfie34 (26770)
• United Kingdom
6 Mar 13
What an unfortunate surname to have, it is a good job that he didn't call the poetic form Crapsey instead of Cinquain. I think the Cinquain comes across as more complex, involved than a Haiku which for me is probably easier to get my head around. When I was at school I always thought poetry had to rhyme, or the first and third line did at least, it's only when you discover true poetry and the works of the greats you find that poetry opens up a whole different story, quite literally!
1 person likes this
@belindayhughes (1096)
• United States
6 Mar 13
Hey there wolfie! Actually, Adelaide Crapsey was a female from the New England region. Her cinquain and other works languished, relatively undiscovered for quite some time, until someone finally volunteered to edit them and bring them to prominence. The cinquain certainly appears more complex than the haiku, but once introduced to it at a time I needed a form to put my new information into, I embraced it. Now that it's been awhile, I have to work at it again. I think the mainstream early education obsession with rhyming poetry handicaps us somewhat. There is an educator's form of the cinquain circulating, to teach language skills to middle and high school users, mostly. I'm not a fan of that cinquain at the moment. I think being forced to do cinquains is no way to go about it. Ya gotta wanna.
