Cinquain
five-line stanza
Cinquain ( SING-kayn) is a class of poetic forms that employ a 5-line pattern. Earlier used to describe any five-line form, it now refers to one of several forms that are defined by specific rules and guidelines.
American cinquain
The modern form, known as American cinquain is inspired by Japanese haiku and tanka and is akin in spirit to that of the Imagists.
In her 1915 collection titled Verse, published a year after her death, Adelaide Crapsey included 28 cinquains. Crapsey's American Cinquain form developed in two stages. The first, fundamental form is a stanza of five lines of accentual verse, in which the lines comprise, in order, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 1 stresses. Then Crapsey decided to make the criterion a stanza of five lines of accentual-syllabic verse, in which the lines comprise, in order, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 1 stresses and 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 syllables. Iambic feet were meant to be the standard for the cinquain, which made the dual criteria match perfectly. Some resource materials define classic cinquains as solely iambic, but that is not necessarily so. In contrast to the Eastern forms upon which she based them, Crapsey always titled her cinquains, effectively utilizing the title as a sixth line.
“Cinquain” enters the record as five-line stanza. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cinquain, five-line and stanza can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q878026. The Library of Congress control number is sh2002001118. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1915.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cinquain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.