Cinquain

A cinquain is the name of a five-line stanza as well as a poetic form created by Adelaide Crapsey with influences from the Japanese haiku and tanka. Her creation is known as the American cinquain.

Crapsey created a syllabic verse form with a pattern of 2/4/6/8/2 syllables.

Others have adapted the form to be based on the number of words or parts of speech. In the word-based pattern, the cinquain has a pattern of 1/2/3/4/1 word(s) per line.

In the parts-of-speech-based pattern, the cinquain has a pattern of a noun/two adjectives/three words ending with -ing/a phrase/and another noun that is synonymous with the noun on the first line.

Students may follow any of these three patterns or attempt to combine the three together for extra credit.

The grading scale breaks down as follows:

____ [2] Line 1—2 syllables/1 word/noun

____ [4] Line 2—4 syllables/2 words/2 adjectives

____ [6] Line 3—6 syllables/3 words/3 words ending in –ing

____ [8] Line 4—8 syllables/4 words/a phrase

____ [2] Line 5—2 syllables/1 word/another word for the noun

____ [8] Makes sense

____ [5] Typed with proper heading

____ [5] extra credit for combining all three patterns

____ total out of 35points