Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1814) was an American poet best known as the inventor of the cinquain. Inspired by the Japanese forms, the haiku and the tanka, a cinquain is comprised of five lines with stresses for each line increasing by one beat for each line — 1, 2, 3, 4 — before returning to a single stress on the final line, as illustrated in the last five poems published above. The poem derives its effect from this pattern, which builds up the reader’s expectations in the first four lines only to be followed by a dramatic collapse in the abbreviated final line.
Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1814) was an American poet best known as the inventor of the cinquain. Inspired by the Japanese forms, the haiku and the tanka, a cinquain is comprised of five lines with stresses for each line increasing by one beat for each line — 1, 2, 3, 4 — before returning to a single stress on the final line, as illustrated in the last five poems published above. The poem derives its effect from this pattern, which builds up the reader’s expectations in the first four lines only to be followed by a dramatic collapse in the abbreviated final line.
Comments