Cinquains for Day Five
On April 5, 2013
Hello to all of those coming back, and to those of you joining us for the first time!
Before we get started, a little public service announcement. I’ve had some inquiries from folks trying to find their sites in the ever-growing participants’ list. I’m working on getting a “search” feature built into the site, but in the meantime, the easiest way to find your site is to go to the participants’ list, and use the drop down buttons in the upper left-hand corner to (1) sort the list alphabetically and (2) display all the sites on a single page. At that point, it’s a matter of finding your blog in the giant alphabetical list. A bit inelegant, perhaps, but workable.
And now, our link for the day! The Poetry Foundation maintains about one jillion podcasts relating to poetry, and they’re adding more all the time. You can hear just one poem. You can hear a lecture on a poet. You can hear an interview. I’m particularly fond of the recordings of old readings — I heard one by William Carlos Williams that was Capital-D Delightful. Check out their many podcast series, and maybe download a little something different for your next walk or long car ride.
Our participant’s site for the day is StumbleFumbleGrumble, which is what I do half the time when I get out of bed in the morning. Anyway, the sea shanty for Day 3 is very funny! It seems like a lot of you enjoyed the sea shanty exercise. Hooray!
But now we have a new prompt to deal with! Because I am a rather obvious person at heart, I challenge you to write a cinquain on this, the fifth day of NaPoWriMo. A cinquain is a poem that employs stanzas with five lines. Each line has a certain number of accented or stressed syllables, and a certain number of overall syllables per line. In the “American” cinquain, a form invented by a woman with the highly unfortunate name of Adelaide Crapsey, the number of stresses per line is 1-2-3-4-1, and the number of syllables is 2-4-6-8-2. So the first line would have two syllables, one stressed and one unstressed. The second line would have four syllables, two of which are stressed, and so on. This kind of accent/syllabic verse can be a bit frustrating at first, but it’s useful for learning to sharpen up your language!
Here’s an example to get you going:
Deep Winter
At night
when I drive home
in snow like falling ice,
the crystal air becomes a road
of stars.
