Poetic Form: The Crapsey Cinquain

A cinquain can refer to any five-line poem with a set pattern or syllable count. Adelaide Crapsey, however, made the cinquain her own. Born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1878, at the turn of the century she was class poet at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie. Before her death of tuberculosis, her interest in haiku and tanka led her to develop her own cinquain patterns, as well as a new form of "doublet," a couplet that utilized two rhyming lines of ten syllables each. Much of Adelaide's work was published posthumously and it was Carl Sandburg's poem, "Adelaide Crapsey," that re-established her and her art form in popular culture.

Without rhyming, the Crapsey cinquain was most often written in iambic meter ("duh-DUM") and had a set syllable pattern. Its 22 syllables were arranged in lines of 2,4,6,8 and 2 syllables, respectively, for lines one through five.

Crapsey cinquains are the most popular but variations do exist. A "reverse cinquain" has a syllable pattern of 2-8-6-4-2 and a "mirror cinquain" pairs the Crapsey or standard cinquain with the reverse. Combining the two "mirror cinquain" stanzas and eliminating one of the two-syllable lines in the middle creates a nine-line "butterfly cinquain." Link five stanzas and you have a "crown cinquain." There seems to be no shortage of variations.

Examples:

Lightning

Its flash,
a brilliant test
of nighttime's secrecy,
exposes for an instant, then
escapes.

Cardinal

Red bird,
your glorious
plumage is radiant,
as your male ego is displayed
for her.