Cinquains

Another common form of syllable-counted poetry is the cinquain. As you might guess from the name, cinquains have five lines. There are, however, various forms. The most common has lines of 2,4,6,8 and 2 syllables. To match this the stresses should be counted as 1,2,3,4,1 and ideally be placed in either iambic (unstressed, stressed) feet or trochaic (stressed unstressed) feet.

I first came across them in a form known as a didactic cinquain. This form is quite commonly used as a teaching device but doesn’t, generally, produce anything very interesting. This form of the cinquain goes

Line 1: two syllable noun
Line 2: two adjectives (4 syllables altogether) describing the noun
Line 3: three participle adjectives describing what the noun can do (6 syllables)
Line 4: a four word phrase (8 syllables) about the noun
Line 5: a two syllable word or phrase that references the first line

For example (and I’m making this up on the spot, and like most didactic cinquains it’s good for nothing but teaching)

Harrow
Steep-street, old-style
Teaching, learning, tiring
Many lessons, too many hills
Schooldays

That’s not my poem for the day, it’s just an example of the didactic form. (And yes, I know the stresses are off in line 4, but it doesn’t matter so much in didactic forms.) You can ignore the syllable count for lower level classes and base it on word count instead.

Anyway, more to the point are the more literary versions.

I won’t write a new description here, just point you to one.

All I will say, is my former mantra: I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that. (In fact rather a lot more complicated than that.)

This is all by way of introduction to tomorrow’s poem of the day which I have only just completed to my satisfaction. It will be a separate post for reasons which will be immediately obvious.