Agreed. This seems like a bullshit form. You really need more than an arbitrary line / syllable count to make a form. Let's see, I'll invent a form that goes 1, 5, 1, 2, 5 in syllable count, & call it, "The UNC Tarheels are the National Champions in Basketball 2005 woot woot!!" form. Here's an example:

This
is my invented
form.
It sucks.
What did you expect?

Whoo!
Carolina won!
Whoo!
Accept
this title shout-out.

Now, you could probably put a reasonably interesting & striking epigram into this, as into any other arbitrary lineation, but it would have nothing to do with the form. Thus, the form is pointless, as the cinquain seems to be. Would be interested to hear Patricia's take after reading a book (!) on this thing, though would NOT be interested to read the book myself.

Chris

Patricia, Can't even get into pm function on this machine, but no, I don't think we'll be devoting time to the cinquain on the Lariat Board.

No sweat, Tim. Thanks anyway.

==============================
Chris:

You said that you "Would be interested to hear Patricia's take after reading a book (!) on this thing, though would NOT be interested to read the book myself."

It's doubtful that you'd be interested to hear my "...take...on this thing,...", Chris. The books I ordered were: 1) Alone in the Dawn: The Life of Adelaide Crapsey by Karen Alkalay-Gut; and 2) Complete Poems and Collected Letters of Adelaide Crapsey edited by Susan Sutton Smith. Besides, I don't make book reports. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

I've never cared much for cinquains - but the first time I read anything about them may have tainted my view of them, although I doubt it - that Adelaide first developed this form after translating haiku and tanka into English from French, in 1909. It sounded then like too much bloat from an already distorted copy of an eastern form, and I haven't seen a cinquain yet that has pushed me away from that notion. The lines breaks are what makes it seem particularly pretentious to me. If I break Michael's the way I read them, here's how the linebreaks would actually fall:

Faceless on rain-slick streets,
I prowl the city,
slide through midnight crowds
and never touch a soul.

Cinquains--
I regard them as poems
for poets
who will not take the time
to write poems.

The only one of Crapsey's I thought even had a true haikuishness feel to it was November night, but it still makes me want to strip it down.

Listen. . .
With faint dry sound
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.

----
Like ghosts, frost-crisp'd leaves
break from the trees
and fall.


Just not a very impressive form, to me.

Patricia, I had the impression somehow you had bought a book on the cinquain form itself.

What does Lew Turco say about this form? Surely if there's anything more to it than syllable count he would mention it?

Of course, I can churn out a bad sonnet in 10 minutes, but that doesn't necessariy reflect on the sonnet...

Anyway, I'm not wild about any of the examples, but I'm not persuaded that good poetry cannot be written in this form. Any arbitrary rules can be put to good use by a good poet. Take syllabics of Marianne Moore, no less arbitrary in syllable count than these. Doesn't Verlaine say a poet must invent even his obstacles?

And Michael, surely you are just adding to the "considerable clatter" by this thread! You have perversely insured talk on the cinquain will continue into another week!

But Alicia, isn't it the point that a good poet can take a wholly arbitrary form and make it seem (at least seem) non-arbitrary? When Marianne Moore does this, I greatly enjoy her poetry; often enough, however, I have to admit that while appreciating her splendid imagery and her original vision, I can't see the point of her forms at all. In particular, I've never seen the sense of rhymes that no ear could ever catch.

[This message has been edited by Gregory Dowling (edited April 17, 2005).]

Fireflies

Glowing
orbs; small spirits
flitting through fragrant pines.
Silent, I watch the girl watch them,
entranced.


This is a Cinquain from the Amaze Journal. How can you not be impressed with this?

Granted, I can see the objection about the form, after reading a few others in the journal. They read like run on sentances.

I always imagined the 4th line to be independent. It should be able to stand on it's own (like the example above, if need be). It doesn't need the 5th line to complete it.

In my view, if you don't maintain that 4th line requirement then yes, you can do a form in free verse, cut it up neatly and there you go, instant crap probably; but it's not a Cinquain.

For me, that 4th line requirement distinguishes the Cinquain from other forms and what makes it attractive, vibrant and challenging.

The question for me is not whether good poetry can be written which happens to conform to the cinquain requirements, it's whether the requirements themselves have any value. In a good sonnet, the poet's obeisance to (and play with) sonnet form--in rhyme, meter, and a striking turn of thought--increases one's pleasure reading. Villanelles, ballades, blank verse, rhymed quatrains, rhyme royal, terza & ottava rima--all have their own music & their own associations which, when used to good advantage, are pleasant in themselves. Even haiku & tanka, to enthusiasts of those forms, have their own expectations which a skilled practitioner can subvert or fulfill in pleasant and exciting ways. What are the expectations a cinquain establishes? What are you playing off of more than just an arbitrary syllable count? No doubt imposing such a count could occasionally help a talented poet write a poem that might not otherwise have been written--but why the requirements of the cinquain as opposed to any others? What is the logic of the form?

Cinquains
made Adelaide
a name, I guess, somehow.
All in all, I find them pretty
Crapsey.

Well, it's not very good, for starters. Glowing orbs? Small spirits? Fragrant pines? It's like your average middling American haiku combined with your average first-person "I was out walking in nature and then had a sudden unearned epiphany at the end" poem that journals get inundated with.

Sure, you could probably do a good cinquain, but you could do the same thing or better with your own nonce form. I really think you can learn all you need to know about the cinquain from the name of its originator.



------------------
Steve Schroeder