The cinquain - an origin post
Want a truly American poetic form? Look no further than the cinquain, created by Adelaide Crapsey, who wrote in the early 20th century (before dying at age 36 due to tuberculosis in 1914). Despite her early demise, Crapsey led a colorful, unconventional life. She attended Vassar, where she edited the yearbook, becoming a teacher after graduation. She taught at the American School in Rome and at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, before her illness caused her to stop. She moved to a "cure cottage" in Saranac Lake, New York,
Crapsey had studied some of the forms we discussed earlier this month, like the haiku and tanka, and admired their compressed language. She wrote extensively on form and scansion in a manuscript entitled A Study of English Metrics, enjoying the act of research and analysis.
She also wrote poetry, and while at Saranac Lake, she created the first and only true American form, the cinquain. Given the seriousness of her medical condition (and the fact that her cottage overlooked the cemetery), it's little wonder that much of her poetry - especially her cinquains - deal with issues of death or mortality, either directly or by implication.
Tomorrow will be soon enough to go into the specific requirements of the form, but for today, I hope you'll enjoy these four of Crapsey's cinquains:
November Night
by Adelaide Crapsey
Listen. . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.
Amaze
by Adelaide Crapsey
I know
Not these my hands
And yet I think there was
A woman like me once had hands
Like these.
Trapped
by Adelaide Crapsey
Well and
If day on day
Follows, and weary year
On year…and ever days and years…
Well?
Triad
by Adelaide Crapsey
These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow... the hour
Before the dawn... the mouth of one
Just dead.