There has been considerable clatter regarding the cinquain on the Sphere recently, and it bothers me because I think we are making a great deal of fuss about a form which encourages facile pseudo-poetry, and has little else going for it.

The demonstration of this, as far as I am concerned, is that virtually all of the discussion on this Board and Mastery - with the exception of some good analysis by Victoria Galle, and some language-related comments by Jerry Hartwig - is focused on the mechanics of the form - the number of syllables, or feet, per line. You would think we were a pack of accountants, rather than poets. Almost nobody seemed interested in what the cinquain is intended to accomplish (or seemed to know), how it should be constructed as a poem, why and how it evolved. I know Adelaide Crapsey invented the thing, but - as opposed to, for example, the haiku - it seems a poetic form without a poetic pedigree, without a sense of purpose, or a structure beyond mechanics.

Consequently, the form seems to lend itself to portentuous, but ultimately banal pronouncements, and most of what i have seen here - including Ms. Crapsey's work - is unimpressive.

To prove a point: here are a series of cinquains I wrote this afternoon. I normally spend days or even weeks on the work I post here. These probably averaged about three minutes each. The two stanzas might have required ten minutes total. I don't think any of them have any depth - but I felt that way about every cinquain I read. A few may be "shallow good" - they give the impression of being decent poetry, even if they aren't. Some humor and wordplay helps a bit. Compared to other cinquains posted, including Ms. Crapsey's, I don't think they are significantly better or worse, and in some ways more interesting. But it was all just quick-quick gabblegabblegabble. We can all count to eight, and most of us can write an interesting sentence or two. It was like doing ditties for the FunExcise Forum. I'm not finding much beyond that. (Further comments after the last poem.)

(1)
Hooker.
She used to stand
on Eighth and Forty-Fifth
and now she's gone. I guess she found
a fix.

(2)
Faceless
on rain-slick streets
I prowl the city; slide
through midnight crowds and never touch
a soul.

(3)
Wet snow
falling all night
encloses the cabin.
"Winter," she says, stretched by the fire,
"Winter!"

(4) (stanzas)
It was
one of those things
Piss call at three AM.
and yesmyloveyesmyloveyes!
Then snores

And she
now wide awake
can hear the fucking clock
remembers he was reading Joyce.
Of course!

(5)
Cinquains
I regard them
as poems for poets
who will not take the time to write
poems.

<u>Comments:</u> In writing these I found that I was unconsciously going for a twist - or a least a ta da in the last line, to add interest, and was also depending on irony and/or humor. But I do that all the time, so I'm not sure it's cinquain-inspired. I was basically digging into the old tool box and trying to make the dogs sing.

(1) and (2) are extensions of the kind of pretend city-smart tough guy stuff I wrote as a kid. Banal. But they seem to slide into this form, and the form makes them seem better than they are. (And, yes, nyctom, I know that (1) is outdated since Times Square was Disneyed and the hookers moved to the meatpacking district. It's a retro poem.)

I agree with Alicia's comments about the form possibly lending itself to stanzas, played with this a bit in (4), and I think it's the most successful of the group.

(5) pretty much summarizes how I feel after playing with the form. I feel it doesn't offer enough depth or challenge, and can encourage "lazy" poetry.

Dee - apologies for combining poetry and an op-ed piece, but I didn't know where else to put this. God knows it's not Mastery. And I didn't want to use General Talk as an excuse for posting my own stuff (particularly after recently criticizing David Halitsky for doing the same thing.) It would not be considerate to append it to Yolanda's thread. So - since it's a week since my last Poetry Board post - I put it here.

Michael Cantor




[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited April 16, 2005).]

Give 'em titles, Michael; and send 'em off via e-mail to AMAZE: The Cinquain Journal. Who knows?!

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

FWIW: It took me about 15 minutes to write two of 'em. Still thinking, however, about [uh] appropriate titles. I mean: Unlike haiku, cinquains need titles. Seriously!

With reference to the Mastery board, etc., you said that "Almost nobody seemed interested in what the cinquain is intended to accomplish (or seemed to know), how it should be constructed as a poem, why and how it evolved." Of course, you're right! Since I started that Adelaide Crapsey cinquain thread, I've been doing some online research, attempting to learn more than the mechanics of the form . . . going so far as to order two books from amazon.com after discovering what Denis Garrison, the editor of AWAKE, had to say about the cinquain form. Anyway . . .

Fact is: I wouldn't mind seeing Tim Murphy inviting Mr. Garrison to do a Poet Lariat workshop! Would you?

Have a nice day, Michael.




[This message has been edited by Patricia A. Marsh (edited April 16, 2005).]

Mike - Boy you really don't like Cinquains. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/biggrin.gif

OK. You wrote these in three minutes? It looks it. Most of them read like run on sentances. Strangely enough, one reads like a five line warped haikuish thingy.

"Wet snow
falling all night
encloses the cabin.
"Winter," she says, stretched by the fire,
"Winter!"


Strangely enough I like this one:

"And she
now wide awake
can hear the fucking clock
remembers he was reading Joyce.
Of course!"

Kind of clunky between line 3 and 4 and I'm not sure of using "and" in the first line but heck the Cinquains weren't important. Your opinion was.

Sorry, but this doesn't belong here. Tacking on the poems was a weak excuse.

I'm not sure what to say. Do you want crits that confirm the paucity of the form, and therefore your poetry's failure?

Michael: 'To prove a point'

Possibly the wrong reason to post on a workshop, thus wasting everyone's time with an attack on other's poetry and chosen form. Besides, the fact that you are capable of writing bad cinquains does not prove that the form is inherently flawed, only that in this instance your logic is.

I notice that the form has been used (in my opinion) very successfully on another thread.

The second one of yours is particularly awful, but then you knew that. Sigh.

Alex

[This message has been edited by Alexander Grace (edited April 17, 2005).]

I think that's his point, Yolanda. He's acknowledging these are not good poetry, yet they are no worse than what's been posted here as haiku or cinquain - or much of anything else. Plus, with effort, I've no doubt Michael could turn these sentences into nice little gems. He has the ability to look critically at his own work, and analyze it objectively, unlike some who post work of this caliber, then defend, even praise it, in the face of informed criticism.

Michael has demonstrated his ability to write superb poetry, and proven his worth as a critter many times over, as opposed to the occasional newbie who appears, full of self-proclaimed expertise, wanting to tell everyone else how it's done without providing anything that demonstrates their own knowledge or ability.

And no, I don't lead the 'Michael Cantor Fan Club'.

He does *grin*.

Michael,

We are all limited to one poem a week here. That includes you.

Bobby

I never thought I'd hear a cry of 'NOOB!' in here. Sometimes I wonder whose gods we pray to. (I'm only coming back because it seems this thread has been designated a free for all by the writer).

Still, Jerry is right, and I speak as a former noob whose first important lesson was in how little he knew.

Alex

Michael, since you claim that these poems are not worth critiquing, I see this more as a discussion thread. I'm moving it to General Talk. Thanks, Dee

Hmmmmmmm, actually, Michael, I like cinquian. Even more strangely, perhaps, I like some of yours. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif
It's just another form of "short poetry" to me. Like an epigram, perhaps. Concise and to the point, whatever that point might be. Of course, it's better if you actually make a point while you're at it. < g >
If nothing else, it serves as an exercise in restraint, which a lot of poets could definately use. Wouldnt it be fun if we could take all the long winded terrible poetry we've all read and say to the author, "That's a great idea you've hidden in that overly-descriptive, modifier-heavy, adjective-enhanced 40 line poem you've written....now reduce it to a cinquain.and try not to lose a thing." The attempt alone would be a valuable learning tool for many.

I've done that a few times myself and been so pleased with the result that I tossed the original "too much information" first attempt away and held onto the shorter-and-therefore-sweeter cinquain instead.

Innominate

Behold
the changeling child.
The indolent daughter
of the night. She is the sun's bitch.
She shines.

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif Self-portrait, of course. < g >

Lo

Lo-

That is really nice. Looks to me like you've really figured out what makes the cinquain work.

And... You came very close in your post to advocating recommending syllabics to long winded versifiers.

----------


The cinquain appears very good for autobiographical moments. Perhaps it works best when it's treated as a snapshot between two verbs, as Lo's poem above is done.

Did Crapsey invent this to try to improve on imagist poetry? As I've understood it the cinquain was invented in the 19-teens, around the time of H.D. and early Pound. A form that places imagist poetry between two verbs could be seen as an improvement on imagist poetry.

It's also nice to reflect on what Pound's poetry might have been like if he had spent his entire life on short poems like cinquains



[This message has been edited by albert geiser (edited April 17, 2005).]

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

I thought everyone had been very restrained in resisting the temptation of Ms Crapsey's surname. I'm glad it's now been suitably celebrated in Chris's cinquain.

I really find it hard to believe that the cinquain is defined solely by its syllable count any more than the haiku or tanka are.

If Ms. Crapsey were attempting to transpose those forms into English, then presumably the additional requirements of those forms would transpose as well, would they not?

It seems more similar to the tanka than the haiku. Somebody doublecheck me on this, but as I recall, the tanka is meant to be a five line poem with a sort of hinge in the middle, so that lines 1/2/3 convey one image, lines 3/4/5 a different image, and the skill is in crafting line 3 and the two images so that the whole works together as a pleasing and thought-provoking juxtaposition. Sort of a compressed sonnet, with a turn at line 3.

Looking at the cinquain, I'd incline towards transposing this requirement into a turn/hinge on line 4.

Rather than bash the form for trivial gimmickry and prove it by writing a bad poem in 3 minutes, why not see what it can offer by writing the best cinquain you can, finding a way to use the form to contribute to the poem?

A cinquain challenge, perhaps? Post not only the best cinquain you can write, but post along with it an explication of what the form offers and how you used that to strengthen the poem?

hopscotch
in button boots
Adelaide grabs her ring
a child's game from 1910
cinquain

There. I've written one as well. I have to say I'm actually rather pleased with it, though I'm not impressed by the one Yolanda cited for the exact reasons Stephen pointed out.

I've a habit of comparing poetry to everything except poetry, but I see no reason to stop now, at least when a good analogy presents itself.

My mother has a book on the history and practice of formal Japanese flower arrangement. One of the most classic arrangements, deceptively simple, is a single blossom in a single container. The Western classic of a single red rose in an attractive cut-crystal bud vase qualifies as an arrangement of this sort, and while I'm not recalling the name, it's not important.

What is important is that, the same as a single rose in a crystal vase is a flower arrangement, something as simple as a cinquain is a poem, and can often be a very good poem, though when it's mediocre or bad, it's harder to find fault with than a more elaborate form like a sonnet.

I have to say, having just written one, that I like the cinquain. It's a nice little chunky deco-style bud vase with lots of sharp right angles, great for dropping a flower into.

Having just defended it, I'll attack it as well. The trouble with such simplicity is that aside from being a good thing for children and other beginners to start playing with, it can also attract poseurs, who may occasionally pull off a good cinquain every once in a while through random luck, but couldn't write even a mediocre sonnet if their lives depended on it. Which isn't actually the fault of the cinquain, or Adelaide Crapsey, but of the poseurs. Not that you'd hear them admit it.

Part of the beauty of such simple forms is that they can be written off the cuff by a skilled poet or even a talented amateur on the spur of the moment, the same as you can throw a rose in a vase when you know you'll have guests and don't have time for something more elaborate or simply don't want it.

Cinquains don't rhyme, but even limericks, which do, would not be well suited for writing Paradise Lost. Does that make limericks and cinquains bad forms? No. It just makes them small forms, suited for small things, elegant or funny as the case may be.

I'll throw in a small bomb that will make no impression. I have yet to be persuaded that the English interpretation of a Haiku carries any of the quality of the Japanese original. Those who specialise in it seem to me to be lost in some competitive world of superior inside knoowledge which hasn't, in my opinion, added a whit to English poetry.

I have read very good short English poems which claim to be Haiku and are mercifully free of the self-imposed "Haiku rules". I understand why those inspired by a Japanese experience feel connected to it but it seems that poets must use the same honesty as scientists when it comes to forms which grow from language. Our language has strong impulses which make nonsense of structures grown out of a language that is apparently completely unrelated in any way.

This is the closest link I have found so far:
Scythian link to Indo European languages and Japanese?

Janet

I'm sorry, but I think that that could be the most amazing thing ever - a reworking of Paradise Lost in limmerick form. Or senryu. Or how about in palindrome (I.Q. level required to even attempt this I estimate to be around 225, but by then you'd be too clever to understand the original, on the principle that lawn mowers mow grass very badly when powered by jet engines). I recently saw a stage adaptation that had its moments, so if a poem can be made into a play, surely transforming it into another poetic form would be simple. My tongue IS in my cheek.

However, the idea of trying to take the essence of Milton's work and put it in senryu/cinquian (tomato, tomato - let's call the whole thing off. Sigh, that one doesn't work when you write it down) isn't necessarily a bad one. Finding moments of ku in the poetry rather than attempting to reproduce the narrative would I think be the best approach - possibly modernising the concepts, thus acknowledging how recent (recent) western interest in other cultures has been. Here's a silly thirty second attempt at condensing the whole of paradise lost into one senryu (I am in a funny mood tonight. You may have noticed that I am prone to funny moods).

Earth, virgin wasteland
man and angel stake their false claims
then waste it again

Alex



[This message has been edited by Alexander Grace (edited April 17, 2005).]

Janet,

There is nothing wrong with writing three line poems in English. Just don't tag it Haiku, or you end up with Honky Haiku, which always leaves a bad taste.

Bobby

Robert, that's brilliant.

Is there some idea of Japan as this hermetically sealed bubble that poetry sometimes filters out of but never back into? Last I checked, the Japanese were very fond of playing with Western concepts, including Western concepts based on Eastern concepts and not so much lost as mutated in the translation.

Look at, oh, say, Sailor Moon. We have a Japanese cartoon about a blond girl with magical powers and a penchant for wearing Japanese schoolgirl interpretations of Western children's sailor suits circa 1910, which were of course interpretations of ADULT sailor costumes of that era, and then the cartoons are translated into English and little American blond girls--and occasionally adult women and even men into kos-play--are getting outfits based on a Japanese interpretation of a Western costume based on a Western costume, and, um, are they wearing sailor suits anymore? Do you actually have to dig clams to wear clamdiggers? Is a haiku only haiku if written in Japanese in the style that Basho set down?

If Basho were around today, I think he'd both be having a conniption fit and being tickled pink by seeing what he started. I'm perfectly fine with folk calling the little 5-7-5 thingies haiku, the same as I'm fine with folk calling a hamburger a hamburger, even though it was not invented in Hamburg, nor are french fries French--they're what the Belgian's decided to do with something the Incas domesticated. Though I'm certain you can now get a hamburger in Hamburg, french fries in Peru, and even hear English-haiku-influenced haiku in Japan.

I think a large part of the haiku prejudice is because of the language barrier. Americans are only going to see the best-of-the-best haiku translated from Japanese, and of course those are going to look great next to the reams and reams of "Look, Maw, I wrote a poem" haiku written in English, just like the reams and reams of bad nature poems and bad confessional poems and bad sonnets and whatever. And right now in Japan someone is writing how poor modern haiku in Japanese are, because they've been reading the reams and reams of bad ones in Japanese.

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

Kevin and Steven, what you say is brilliant too. So much brilliance floating around, so little light. Goodnight.

Alex

Kevin and Steven,
My "prejudice" isn't that but is based on the nature of language. (I leave aside the aspect of haiku that depends on meaningful calligraphy, graphics i.e. pictographs--not spelling as we know it.)
The nature of form as expression. Expression grows out of the nature of the word.
I think translated haiku are just descriptions of a haiku rather than translations.

I should add that I am seriously interested in Japanese "art" in so far as I have been able to access it through translation, visual art and film. I have read the writing (translated prose) of Tanizaki (a great internationalist as well as nationalist) and I find it difficult to believe that he would disagree with what I say here.

I am discussing the nature of what poetry is rather than attacking haiku.
Janet


[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited April 17, 2005).]

Turco says:

The CINQUAIN is a twentieth-century American syllabic form invented by Adelaide Crapsey. Originally accentual-syllabic, her quintet form consisted, in the first line, of one iamb; in the second, of two iambs; in the third, of three; in the fourth, of four, and in the fifth, of one iamb again. It soon evolved into a syllabic form, somewhat analogous to the Japanese tanka, having line counts of 2-4-6-8-2 syllables, respectively.

<dd>This anonymous poem was originally written in Gaelic, but the form into which it is cast here is an anomaly and an anachronism. With next to no tampering, the poem fell into the form of the cinquain. One of the ancient Irish bardic devices we would today call the circle-back: a poem ended with the same word with which it began. This version keeps that requirement since it ends with the word "Devil," which contains the word "evil":

Evil It Is

Evil
It is to shun
The King of Righteousness
And to make a compact with the
Devil.

<dd><dd>---Anonymous

Steven

I see haiku bias as having the same root as FV bias - because some people have gotten the idea they can write in any manner they wish, without regard to structure or convention - and call it haiku (or free verse). as a result, the majority turn out very poor poetry.

Haiku has certain requirements:

brevity
immediacy
spontaneity
imagery
kigo (seasonal reference)
If it lacks a seasonal reference, it's considered senryu. Senryu still must maintain the other requirements.
natural world reference
sudden illumination

If you don't meet these requirements, it's not haiku. I agree we have to make compensation for the language difference: Yuasa used a four line form when translating Issa, because it comes closer to approximating the natural rhythm of the English language. Others have advocated, which I tend to agree with, a 4-6-4 pattern.

Whatever one chooses, however, one needs to work in the structure. I've seen too many self-claimed poets ignore structure completely, because it's easier to write without restrictions, and they ignorantly call it haiku. The same applies to so-called FV.

BTW, Basho did not invent haiku; haiku is the 'starting verse' for the tanka. Basho was merely the one who is credited as pioneering haiku as an independent form.

In the same vein, I have no problems with cinquains, although I've seen very few polished ones. There's more to it than syllable count. Let's not knock a form just because a large group of people can't do it properly *grin*


[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited April 17, 2005).]

I'm in agreement with you about the anything-goes "haiku" contributing to low regard for the haiku, Jerry.

I don't think it's possible to take the cinquain seriously because there aren't any certifiable Great Poems in the form. Sonnets? Lots. Even villanelles or sestinas? Sure, some. Triolets? Uhhhh, can't think of one. Cinquains? Nope. So maybe the challenge should be "Write the Great English-Language Cinquain" (or Triolet, as you wish).

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

I gather nobody is interested but we have deep cultural roots in common with Latin languages.
Not that anybody seems to think that matters.
Janet

To get an idea why haiku cannot be written in English, go to http://home.inter.net/kenbutler/tendifferences.html and look at the vast differences between the two languages.

Bobby

I don't think it's the "Great Poem" bar so much as the difficulty bar--consider the double-dactyl, which was invented much more recently than the cinquain, but's generally held in higher regard at least by formalists--though admittedly, I know of no double-dactyl journals.

Besides which, while you can get two poets to concur that any given poem is a "Great Poem," getting a roomful to do so is a bit more of a trick. The best you're likely to do is to get the detractors to agree that the poem is a very good poem that's ridiculously famous and popular.

On the business earlier of summing down Paradise Lost into a haiku, a friend taught me a similar game where she summed down famous poems into limericks, and I don't see why we couldn't do that with the cinquain.

However, the trouble with such things is that they at most give you the cliff notes or a quip, not the feel of the original.

How Foucaultan.

Michael Cantor: I don't know about hookers in Times Square. I've seen some since Times Square became a gaudy tawdry hell hole that I avoid at all costs--or at least some I have assumed were hookers--but certainly not the number when it was a tawdry hell hole in a much more interesting way. Ah, nostalgia!

Form is simply that: a form, a way to shape content. I can't see the point in the wholesale condemnation of entire form--a good poem can come in any imaginable form.

I think the problem with elevating a form at the expense of all other possible aspects of a poem--like, fer instance, the content--is that it turns the form into a recipe. And all too often, when this has become the case, it feels like the resulting poem was written by a particularly tyrannical cook...

Continuing my soliloquy:
Tom said:I think the problem with elevating a form at the expense of all other possible aspects of a poem--like, fer instance, the content--is that it turns the form into a recipe. And all too often, when this has become the case, it feels like the resulting poem was written by a particularly tyrannical cook...

I agree entirely. But good use of traditional form is simply as natural as syntax. It happens rather than is contrived.

All poems/objects/sounds are forms.
I think Adelaide Crapsey missed the point. A haiku "happens" to a Japanese Haiku writer. Never to a non-Japanese. Her alleged substitute was a half-realisation of that fact. A miss is as good as a mile. There are plenty of succinct English poems and always have been.
Janet

"alleged substitute"? "half-realisation"? "A miss is as good as a mile."? "...<u>Crapsey</u> missed the point."? [emphasis added]

What <u>is</u> the point, Janet?

"Cinquains may hold a place in Western poetry which is similar to haiku, but cinquains are not just a Western form of haiku. [emphasis added] Crapsey did in fact translate a number of haiku and learned a great deal from them. On the other hand.... She invented cinquains on the basis of her profound studies in English metrics [Crapsey, Adelaide. A Study of English Metrics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1918.]. ..."

<dd><dd><dd><dd>--Denis Garrison

Have you read Ms. Crapsey's studies in English Metrics? I read--somewhere online--that she considered her life's work to be the scientific study of metrics and that writing poetry was secondary in her life. When I checked amazon.com the other day, there were some used collector's copies of her Study in English Metrics available. Would love to have a copy . . . might learn something . . . but . . .



[This message has been edited by Patricia A. Marsh (edited April 17, 2005).]