Writer Wednesday: Cinquian

Let's play!

Oct 08, 2025

Here we are again for the “Free For All”, Writer Wednesday. It’s meant to inspire you to create and let your imagination run free. If you like it here, think about subscribing as a Free or Paid Subscriber!

Huge thanks to Amanda Jones for inspiring many of us by throwing down her cinquian poem:

Four cats

seated, playing

a game, in an alley.

A cocky move - all pause - a fight

breaks out!

So, never one to let a cool writing opportunity pass me by, I thought: Let’s give it a go!

Here’s a little background and some ground rules:

2. The American / Adelaide Crapsey Cinquain Poem Examples

This form was developed by poet Adelaide Crapsey, who wrote many examples of the form in the early 20th century.

The Adelaide Crapsey cinquain poem rules are as follows:

Adherence to iambic meter. (Some of Crapsey’s poems did not use iambic meter, but it’s a predominant feature of much of her poetry.)
The use of a title that builds upon the meaning of the poem.
A strict syllabic count of 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 2.
A single stanza.

Crapsey’s development of the form was inspired by Japanese poetry forms, particularly the tanka and the haiku.

Let’s look at some examples. Pay close attention to the syllable count and how the syllables are stressed in each poem. Each of these examples come from the Poetry Foundation.

Triad

These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow. The hour
Before the dawn. The mouth of one
Just dead.

November Night

Listen.
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.

Amaze

I know
Not these my hands
And yet I think there was
A woman like me once had hands
Like these.

That’s plenty of examples here. I’ll save mine to put in the chat after I’ve written a few.

Enjoy!