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The Cinquain

SING-kayn
Short Lyric and Epigrammatic Forms

A five-line poetic form. The American cinquain, devised by the poet Adelaide Crapsey and published posthumously in her 1915 collection Verse, is a fixed accentual-syllabic pattern of one, two, three, four and one stresses across two, four, six, eight and two syllables per line. Crapsey developed the form under the influence of Japanese haiku and tanka, and it is often described as sharing the compressed, image-centered spirit of the contemporary Imagist movement. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Place of Origin
United States 1
The American cinquain, the fixed form this entity registers, was devised by Adelaide Crapsey; the name cinquain is also used more loosely elsewhere for any five-line stanza.
Structure
Five lines of accentual-syllabic verse with 1, 2, 3, 4 and 1 stresses across 2, 4, 6, 8 and 2 syllables per line. 1
Notable Example
Adelaide Crapsey, Verse (1915, published posthumously) 2
Connections

Associated With

Imagism, Movements

Wikipedia describes the American cinquain as "akin in spirit" to Imagism, not as an Imagist-affiliated form.

Source Cinquain (Wikipedia)

Influenced By

The Haiku, Forms
Source Cinquain (Wikipedia)
The Tanka, Forms
Source Cinquain (Wikipedia)
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Cinquain (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)
  • lead and American cinquain sections
    In her 1915 collection titled Verse, published a year after her death, Adelaide Crapsey included 28 cinquains.
  • lead section, IPA
    SING-kayn
  • American cinquain sections
    a stanza of five lines of accentual-syllabic verse, in which the lines comprise, in order, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 1 stresses and 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 syllables
  • Influenced By: The Haiku, American cinquain section
  • Influenced By: The Tanka, American cinquain section
  • Associated With: Imagism, American cinquain section
View the Source
2. Adelaide Crapsey (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)on devising the form
Quote, on devising the form
Her interest in rhythm and meter led her to create a unique variation on the cinquain (or quintain), a 5-line form of 22 syllables influenced by the Japanese haiku and tanka.
View the Source

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