The Cinquain Challenge: Crapsey Form 1

Welcome back to my exploration of poetical forms. For the next few weeks, we’re going to be focussing on the cinquain.

A cinquain is a five-line poem that has a set number of syllables (or word types) per line. Sometimes the title of a cinquain acts as a sixth line.

The person who created the cinquain form was an American poet named Adelaide Crapsey who was inspired by the strict rules governing Japanese poetry forms. Many of her cinquains can be found in Verse, a collection of her work published in 1915.

The first type of cinquain we’ll look at has no name, so I’ve called it Crapsey Form 1, after its creator. This form has one syllable in the first line, two in the second, three in the third, four in the fourth and only one in the fifth.

Here’s an example, inspired by looking out my window at the park:

Dogs

Walking

Playing ball

With their owners

Friends

And here’s another one.

Ghosts

Screaming

Souls bereft

Of all life’s joy

Weep

Why don’t you give it a try? Try writing at least one cinquain in Crapsey Form 1 for each day of the week. They don’t take a lot of time, but they can be a bit tricky. Here’s one way you might want to approach them:

·         Decide on a topic.

·         Think of words, phrases, feelings and ideas that relate to your topic and work out the order you want to express those things in.

·         Work out how to express each idea in the right number of syllables for the line it’s on.

·         Write your cinquain

·         Check there are the right number of syllables on each line.

·         Centre the poem on your page

Or you can just write them as you go, remembering to check your syllables and centre your poem at the end.

Enjoy!