Cinquains

Cinquains are the last in this series on short, stand alone poetry styles.  What are "Cinquains" anywho?
Cinquain is the name given to any short poem or stanza that consists of five lines. It appears to be a fairly new form of poetry, whose invention is credited to one Adelaide Crapsey; an American poet living around the turn of the 19th Century. She invented the cinquain after reading William Porter's translation of a Hyakunin Isshu anthology titled "A Hundred Verses from Old Japan" and "From the Eastern Sea" by Yone Nogushis and thus Crapsey's verses have a certain relationship to the haiku form of Japanese poetry.
Cinquains are unrhymed poems with 22 syllables that are distributed over 5 lines in this format:

Line 1 : 2 syllables
Line 2 : 4 syllables
Line 3 : 6 syllables
Line 4 : 8 syllables
Line 5 : 2 syllables

The most famous of Crapsey's cinquains is published in her "The Complete Poems" is titled "Triad":

These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow... the hour
Before the dawn... the mouth of one
Just dead.
 
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Sidebar:
I am indebted to Jane Reichhold of AHA Poetry for her help with the background information on Adelaide Crapsey
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As a form of breakup poem; cinquains need quite a bit of thought behind them. The great thing about them is that are not meant to rhyme.
Now, the way I like to look at them..instead of counting syllables is this way:

Line 1 - One word - the subject of the poem or a noun
Line 2 - Two words - usually adjectives that describe line 1
Line 3 - Three words - verbs, ending in "-ing" that relate to line 1
Line 4 - Four words - complete sentence that relates to line 1
Line 5 - One word - A synonym of Line 1 or a word that wraps it up

Using it that way you can get quite a nicely vicious cinquain going as below:

Barry
Chubby, Greasy
Moaning, groaning, whining
The man is nasty
Fatty

 Cinquains are good for pulling out and showing up the nasty habits (or the good ones if you're making up) of your ex.

OK..that's the series on some of the shorter styles of poetry that are out there. If you feel  moved to try out some of yours then grab a pencil and paper and write away

I found this story out there on the 'Net while trawling around for material for a new post and something about it really struck a chord with me:

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package.
"What's in there? I'm betting it's food!" the mouse thought.
He was devastated to see it was a mousetrap!

Running into the farmyard in a panic, the mouse shouted out a warning
"There's a mousetrap in the house! OMG! There is a mousetrap in the house!"
The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said gravely,
"Mr.Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it."
The mouse turned to the pig and told him,
"There is a mousetrap in the house! OMG there is a mousetrap in the house!"
The pig sympathized, but said,
"I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers."
The mouse turned to the cow and said
"Help! Help me! There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"
The cow said,
"Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but, to be honest it's no skin off my nose."
The mouse went back inside, thoroughly dejected by his fellow farm-dwellers responses, to face the farmer's mousetrap alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house:
"SNICK"
The sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.

The farmer's wife, filled with joy, rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a rattlesnake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer's wife.
The farmer rushed her to the hospital , and she returned home with a fever. Now, everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient. But his wife's sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer's wife did not get well, sadly she died. So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had to slaughter the cow to provide enough meat for all of them.
The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

So, the moral of this story is?

Next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn't concern you, remember -- when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We are all involved in this journey we call life. We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another.

Have a great weekend

Peace

John

Haikus / Senryu

Haikus are a form of Japanese poetry dating back to the 16th century. They were mainly used to describe  an aspect of Nature that the writer felt particularly strongly about.
Senryu have a similar structure to haiku but are based around humans and human emotions
Three of the most famous Haiku - style writers were:
Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694 ), Yosa Buson, (1716 - 1784 ) and Kobayashi Issa (1763 - 1827 ) .

Each haiku and senryu are comprised of only 3 lines with each line being a specific number of syllables in length

Line 1: 5 Syllables
Line 2: 7 Syllables
Line 3: 5 Syllables

The following is one of Matsuo Basho's famous haikus:

Temple bells die out.
The fragrant blossoms remain.
A perfect evening!


Due to their history Senryu are perfect for breakup poems as below:

"Hello again." Click!
"Still love you." Click! "Please call." Click!
Do not hassle us!

As this excerpt from an article written by Karen Bellamy shows; haiku and senryu are perfect for "touchy-feely" writing:

"... Now whilst the haiku in its finest form is an exquisite piece of distilled art, you will find it is not too difficult to write haikus of a lesser standard that are still good to read. The 17 syllable limitation really helps when you have difficulty in writing 'feelings' because you have to discard the non-essential words and just focus on the really important ones ..."

For the full article: Journaling From The Heart With Haiku
For Karen's blog: Scraps Of Mind

Limericks
As I said back in "Lesson 1": limericks  are short, stand -alone poems that are only 5 lines long. Being short, you the poet, have to use the right words to get your meaning across.

The history of why limericks are called "limericks" is very cloudy. The common thought is that the name stemmed from an Irish drinking game where each contestant would sing or say a whole verse and then the next contestant would say his piece. Repetition and pausing were not allowed and were punishable by forfeits (usually drinking ones!). As these verses were usually dependent on rhyming place names with people, the city of "Limerick" gave massive problems with rhymes unless a truly gross word was used. This is the idea why so many limericks seem to start:
"There was an old man from Tralee... " etc. etc.
This gave rise to most Limericks being foul, nasty rhymes but funny with it.

This is one of the most common Limericks out there; you may recognize it!

Hickory, dickory dock
The mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one
The mouse ran down
Hickory dickory dock

As you can see Lines 1, 2 and 5 are rhyming with each other and lines 3 and 4 also rhyme with each other.
They also have a fairly rigid syllable structure:

Hick | or | y | dick | or | y | dock
The | mouse | ran | up | the | clock
The | clock | struck | one
The | mouse | was | done
Hick | or | y | dick | or | y | dock

Seeing as this is a blog about breakups and makeups;  how about a breakup limerick then:

He thought her a bit over-rated
She said that he was out-dated
Strange as it seems
They both had bad dreams
Now they are two, unrelated!

Personally I would think that using Limericks as a style of breakup poem would be difficult due to them being on the whole funny, nonsense verses.

Why bother with poetry?

Poetry is the expression of a thought, an idea, an emotion or a story in a particular way that has a flow and a rhythm created by the sounds and syllables in it.

As an acquaintance of mine (Mr. D. Siluk  Ed.D.) has written:
"First if you can write poetry well, you can write anything well, it is the highest form of writing, or is suppose to be. Second I repeated what I had said the first time, go check the bookstores, they got large sections of poetry. There is art and skill in poetry. And third or forth, poetry is a little story the author is telling you, and yes, they have to condense it, and most often go according to a style, and it can be often times only read by someone who has experience what you have, but then so is prose in a way, it is just that prose is smoother to read. And if you use a lot of adjectives, you might be getting into poetic prose and you don't even know it."
You can find the whole article here: Questions On Poetry(From the Smart Guys)

I like that first point "...if you can write poetry well, you can write anything well...".
Why? Simply because you have to think when composing poetry. You have to think about what you are trying to say, you have to think of the words that will carry the most "punch", you have to think of style, rhyme, rhythm, meter. Which leads me onto the second point he stated :" There is art and skill in poetry ". There sure is !

All types of poetry are often written in several styles. These styles are defined by the number of lines in each stanza or verse, the syllables used in each line or how rhyme is used and so on. Here is a list of the main styles of poetry that I'll be discussing over the next few days.

Limericks, Haikus and Cinquains:
These poems have one thing in common; they're short! Each of them is only three or five lines long. They are useful in getting the reader to use his imagination when he reads the lines. They can be funny, thought-provoking and/or even educational!

Couplets, Quatrains and Sonnets:
Couplets are the most popular and most widely used style of poetry where the verse (or stanza) is made up of 2 lines which rhyme with each other.
The Quatrain is a 4 line stanza where the 2nd and 4th line rhyme and have a similar syllable set-up.
The Sonnet is a stand alone 14 line poem usually made up of 3 quatrains and 1 couplet

Free Verse and Ballads:
Free Verse is as it sounds. It follows no rules (or possibly breaks them all!) when it comes to structure, rhyming or line length and is getting to be quite common with modern poets.
Ballads are an older style of writing poetry where the poem tells a story. They were usually sung and so they had a "verse" of 8-10 lines and a "chorus" or refrain of 5 lines where the last line was always repeated.

Epics, Iambic Pentameter:
Epics are seriously long poems that are very descriptive. Some of them are so long that they become books in their own right! "Beowulf" or Homer's "Iliad" are examples of epics.
Iambic Pentameter seems to be a fairly complicated way of writing poetry. Basically "iambic" means that there is a short syllable followed by a long syllable and the "pentameter" means that the short and long is repeated five times. It sounds difficult but once you see the examples you'll understand!

OK. Here endeth the first lesson!

John

P.S. If you know of anyone who would like to see their poetry online then ask them to leave a comment and I'll put them up on this site for free.

So, you've found that special person online. You've chatted in the chatroom, you've flirted in the forums and you've imagined via Instant Messaging but how do you get them gagging to hear from you again. How do you get them to actually look forward to another contact from you?
 
Here are six tips on digital activities that you and your new cyberfriend can share:

1) Comments 2) Recipes 3) Greeting cards 4) Online Auctions 5) Fashion
and
6) Listening.

Comments:
No matter who we are we all like to know that we look good. We know that all there is between us is 2 computers and a gazillion miles of cable but it is still nice to be told that we look good. How can we find out? By asking questions that's how. What clothes do we like? What hairstyles do we like? Glasses or contacts? Heels or flats? Once we have the answers we can build up a picture of our cyberbuddy. Just don't forget to say how attractive or handsome they must look.

!! WARNING !!
Do not get too personal here! You can lose online friends a lot quicker and easier than you may realize. Just go easy.

Another section you can share is those random acts of kindness that you've both done or seen..whether it was helping a person out or something you saw on the news or read in the papers.
So by showing kindness, being mannerly and keeping your language under control you can show that you are an upbeat and positive person (a good point in all respects !)

Recipes:
Once you've talked about the weather and grown bored with it; the next most popular (and safest) option is food. Sharing your favorite cooking styles, recipes and restaurants is a sure way of breaking the ice. You could swap links to your favorite cooking sites, or even take photos of your latest creation and share them through online photo galleries.
 
Greeting Cards:
This may sound a strange thing to share digitally as most "cards" come by snail mail. But it is an excellent way to say "Thanks for the chat". There are lots of sites where you can make a totally unique card that you can send electronically. Making something shows the recipient that you've taken the time to think of them and you've put some effort into creating something just for them.
Here'a a link to 1 of the many sites out there that you could use (and it is free!):
Online Greeting Cards - Thank You

Auctions:
Online auction sites sell almost anything and everything. Use the site's search function to find items that go back to special dates for you and your buddy such as birthdays, anniversaries or schooldays. A great gift could be a digital copy of a newspaper from your friend's birth day.
This is a link to just about the most famous of auction websites and I have just used "newspaper" as the search term - feel free to use any search term you want:
Online Auction  - Newspaper

Fashion:
Fashionistas and fashion always create opinions. Opinions create discussion and those discussions bring us closer together.
If you have a keen eye for fashion..or you just wanna LOL at those without, then check out:
The Fashion Police

Listening:
Listening is different online to offline. Basically it means "Paying Attention". Read your prospective date's profile then talk to them about it. That shows that you've gone beyond their photograph and you are eager to know more about them. Don't be long-winded on your replies as nobody likes a gasbag but then again don't be the "strong and silent" type; you are going to have to strike a happy medium.

OK ... Well I hope those 6 tips get you that all-important "call-back" and if they have then don't hesitate to leave a message on the main site as to which one worked for you so all of us can benefit.

Peace, love and happiness

John

Breakup Poems' Blog

Hi, welcome to  Breakup Poems' blog.
Here you will find helpful tips on poetry and how to use to use it to...well, do whatever you want with it... whether you want to diss your ex or try and mend those burning bridges.
Also you'll find tips and methods on breaking up, making up and all the stuff in-between as well.
I also hope to add videos and audio as I find good/useful ones..if you have any tips then please leave a comment and I'll check them out