Some Cinquains

[MorpheusSandman]

Hi all. I've really missed reading and critiquing everyone's poems on here, but life has been very hectic for the past six months. I hope things have settled down enough to where I can get back to being a regular contributor as I always feel like a big part of my life is absent when I'm away from here for so long.

Anyway, I haven't had too much time to write in the past several months, but I did manage to work on some cinquains, which is a form I've gained a lot of respect for as it really challenges you to suggest so much beyond the words themselves. The titles serve as first lines. Hope you enjoy, and all criticisms are welcome!

Rabbit
Once young and small
Ran between the bricks—but
He got older, grew fat, and then
Got stuck

Breathing
In tune and time
Fragile carnal statue
A song in stone—broke in moments
By sighs

Prayer
A whispered word
Nightly hallowed vigils
A voice replies: hollow echoes
That fade

A Drop
Cracks the surface
Encircling ripples touch
Distant shorelines; They, weakened, pause
Dying

Sparrows
They flock around
Eating, drinking—a sound!
They fly and line trees, awaiting their
Return

Passage
To roads unknown
Searching darkened caverns
I know a way—Outside, time, life
Age, pass

You Know
I know too well
Who knows how well we know
Confused mind(s)(!) that know(s)(-)all know(s) that’s
Nothing

A Shot
Ringing out to
The mountains, valleys, plains—
Chiming bells call the land into
Oceans

[Bar22do]

You're so very welcome back, Sandman!!! What a joy to have you back!
Interesting pieces and their conciseness is their strength. I LOOOOVE "Passage" and "Breathing" and "A Drop" especially but all of them made me pause, see the image, hear the sounds that fade, feel the consequences etc etc... and ah, the poor rabbit, imv such a powerful metaphor for our lives... Original and beautiful pieces, Morpheus. Thanks for them and your return.
Bar

[blank|verse]

Firstly, it's good to see you posting again Morpheus. :) I hope it will be the first of many more.

I'm not overly au fait with the form of cinquain beyond the obvious, and checking on the internet brought up a whole range of different sub-forms and their attendant rules.

All yours have a nice, haiku-like feel to them, of moments captured. I don't know if they've been posted in chronological order, but the later ones certainly seemed more ambitious and inventive, particularly 'You Know'. I also liked the enjambment of 'A Shot', which I feel gives it a fluidity that some of the earlier, more end-stopped pieces lack.

And 'Rabbit' reminded me of Beatrix Potter's 'Peter Rabbit' who stole carrots from Mr McGregor's farm and then one day found he was too fat to escape under the gate!

Good to have you back. b|v

[Cunninglinguist]

It's good to see you back.

[MorpheusSandman]

@Bar: Thanks for the welcome! Your favorites are also my own from these. As for the rabbit, believe it or not, it was actually inspired by my real pet rabbit I had as a kid. In our backyard we had these brick partitions with square holes between them, probably about 2in.x 2in. My rabbit always ran through them, but, just like the poem said, one day he got stuck. What it doesn't say is how we had to pry him out!

@BV: I think cinquains are much closer to the spirit of Haikus than simply copying the 5/7/5 syllable count of the latter. Japanese and English are just two completely different languages and I think cinquains capitalize on the formal possibilities of Haikus (like the idea of a kireji) that's more apt in English. These were posted in chronological order, and I have definitely experimented with different ideas, including end stops, enjambments, punctuation, echoes, grammatical clusters, metrical patterns, kireji placement and type, etc. to see what kind of affect they had. A Shot is really the only piece without a kireji that plays more like two complete thoughts instead of a collection of 3-6 connected-but-separate thoughts. The latter is one of the things I find most appealing about Haikus and how to replicate that in cinquains, the idea that you can write 5 lines that are all superficially different, but connect in intuitive, more than literal, ways with subtle echoes between the first three lines and last two.

@Cunninglinguist: Thanks!

[Jinian]

Well.. as an art form, they're certainly succinct, glimpses and very capable.

[MorpheusSandman]

Thanks, Jinian.

[Hawkman]

My favourites here are A Drop, Sparrows and Passage. there is definately a flavour of oriental minimalism in these peices which I like. Good to see you back among the threads, Morpheus, long may it continue!

Live long and prosper - H

[Delta40]

I haven't thought about cinquains and I am sure there is a cinquain thread on lit-net along with the Haiku thread. What do you think is the key challenge of cinquains that set them apart from haiku?

[Brahma]

Hello, Morpheus.

I'm very new to all this, and was jogging through the various blogs, just to get the hang of things, when I came across your cinquains. Alleluia!

I'm interested in poetry, and have tried my hand at various forms - in particular the cinquain in an extended form, as in the following:


Passing Clouds

Some day,
when I am old
and my well-meaning friends
have bidden me prepare myself
for death -

watch out!
I’ll go to town
and buy a Meerschaum pipe
and stuff it full of pungent herbs
and puff

sweet clouds
of perfumed smog
in their direction as
they, in their misplaced concern for
my health,

beseech
me to stop it
before I do myself
irreparable harm. Poor souls!
If they

but knew
to what extent
I intended to sit
and watch those passing clouds, they’d be
appalled.

I was thrilled and uplifted when reading your contributions, Morpheus.

Regards,

Brahma.

[MorpheusSandman]

@Delta: I did see a cinquain thread in the games/contest section where every poster has to start their cinquain with the last line of the last one posted.

Your question is very interesting, and something that I've given quite a bit a thought to. Firstly, we have to remember that Haikus were designed for the Japanese language, which, unlike our stress timed language, is built around moras (a phonetic unit of weight). Multimoraic languages have an inherently greater rhythmic diversity than do stress-timed languages because time is built into the language. So a Haiku is actually built around a pattern of 5, 7, and 5 moras instead of syllables, and I don't think syllables are really capable of exploiting the formal qualities available in the Japanese language in that format for two reasons: One is because English rhythm isn't measured by syllables but by stress and, two, because 5 and 7 make for awkward stress-rhythms since iambs and trochees are the most common metrical feet (which would make a 7-line 3.5 feet and a 5-line 2.5 feet). Cinquains fix all of these problems. All the lines require an even number of syllables, which fits in well with iambs and trochees as a more natural rhythm for English. The line breaks help enhance this rhythm (building, falling), as well as providing more formal/structural possibilities because there are two more lines and one (the 8-syllable line) can easily function as a fulcrum (by dividing it in two).

The first poem I wrote after considering the form was Breathing, and I think it best shows my approach to the form in a number of ways. Firstly, each line alternates trochees/iambs, which emphasizes the rising/falling nature of the form; trochee lines are followed by iambs, creating a delay from the unstressed ends of the former to the unstressed beginnings of the latter, while, alternatively, iamb lines are followed by trochees, and the end-stresses of the former cause the beginning-stresses of the latter to "rush forward". The first two lines of the poem form one thought unit, while third line introduces another, self-contained but developmental thought. The fourth line, I think, fully exploits the form's possibilities, with all the stressed words (song, stone, broke, moments) echoing back to other words in the poem (song/tune, stone/statue, broke/fragile, moments/time), and the em-dash serving to "break" the line the same way that the line is describing something breaking. Here, the em-dash serves as a rough equivalent to a kireji or "cutting word" in a Haiku. Likewise, the last line (in sighs) plays on the title "breathing", and (I hope) suggesting, along with the word "carnal", something erotic, even orgasmic in nature.

@Brahma: Thanks for the kind words! I very much like your piece, and I think it does show that the cinquain can be utilized in a longer, more narrative format. While I don't think that necessarily plays to the form's inherent strengths, I do think it creates some interesting possibilities, especially in the rhythm. I wrote a similar "narrative" cinquain called Yume that I posted here. (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45295) I'm working on two others, a mirror cinquain dedicated to Monet, and a Garland cinquain (perhaps the ultimate challenge in the form!) coincidentally titled Passing that opens with a "passing cloud" metaphor!