[Patricia A. Marsh]

Originally posted by ChristyElizabeth:
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.

"November Night" is the first cinquain in a sequence of cinquains written by an invalid--Adelaide Crapsey--who died in her 36th year from TB. That first cinquain--perhaps the first cinquain ever written by anyone, inasmuch as Ms. Crapsey invented the form--<u>that</u> poem needs more words to explain than it took to write it!

If you're interested, I posted one explanation of "November Night"--one that I found in Karen Alkalay-Gut's biography of Adelaide Craspey, Alone in the Dawn: The Life of Adelaide Craspey. It's at Musing on Mastery.

All best.



[This message has been edited by Patricia A. Marsh (edited April 21, 2005).]