Quote:
Originally posted by Chris Childers:
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?
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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