CINQUAINS

Why have

I thought the dew

Ephemeral when I

Shall rest so short a time, myself,

On earth?

​

Adelaide Crapsey’s cinquain form is an American original. Its delicate, cut, and imagistic 2-4-6-8-2 lines can be seen as an even-syllable reflection of the odd-syllable Japanese poetics that she had encountered in Yone Noguchi’s poems and translations. Equally, the form accorded with her research on the deterministic nature of normal syllabic stress in English poetry. This collection presents for the first time all of Crapsey’s cinquains in one dedicated volume.