The Cinquain Challenge: Form 5—The Butterfly Cinquain

This week, we’re looking at a fifth type of cinquain—the Butterfly Cinquain. Again, it uses either a Crapsey Form 1 or a Crapsey Form 2 as a base.

For those of you who are new to this series, Adelaide Crapsey was an American poet who was inspired by the rules of Japanese poetry to create her own poetical form, 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 fifth type of cinquain we’ll look at is called a Butterfly Cinquain. The Butterfly Cinquain is a nine-line verse with two syllables in the first line, four in the second, six in the third, eight in the fourth, two in the fifth, eight in the sixth, six in the seventh, four in the eighth and two in the ninth line.

If you look at this verse’s shape on the page, you will see why it’s called a butterfly cinquain.

Here’s an example, inspired by the evil nature of trolls:

Troll man

Beneath the bridge

Shadowed face, blackest heart

Darkest of minds, blackest of needs

Evil

By nature, by deed, by desire

Unrepentant, unbowed

Cruelly shameless

Troll man

Why don’t you give it a try? Try writing at least one butterfly cinquain 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; and
• Centre the poem on your page.

Or you can just write them as you go, letting inspiration take you where it will, but remember to check your syllables and centre your poem at the end.

Enjoy!