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
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