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These craft and critique prompts inevitably turn our attention to poetry styles/forms and in turn we more often than not, will become number crunchers. Counting syllables, words, lines all in order to fit the patterns of a given poetry style.

Today, the 5th surely invokes the five-line stanza style of poetry or cinquain. But not for us the ten syllable, five liner with rhyme ababb rhyme scheme of Donne’s “Hymn to God”
“We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ’s cross and Adam’s tree, stood in one place;
Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.

Not even the American cinquain developed  by Adelaide Crapsey of 22 syllables in 5 rhymeless lines as in “Niagara”

“How frail
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs,
Autumnal, evanescent, wan,
The moon.”

Crapsey’s cinquain has since been elaborated on by others in several ways and given today’s double whammy of the 5th of the fifth month, our challenge today will be:

Either the cinq-cinquain,

  • a series of 5 [entire] Crapsey Cinquains, 25 lines total
  • syllabic count: 2-4-6-8-2 in each stanza
  • written with or without breaks between stanzas

 OR the cinquain chain/crown cinquain.

  • a series of 5 [entire] Crapsey Cinquains, 25 lines total
  • syllabic count: 2-4-6-8-2 in each stanza
  • written with a break between each stanza
  • last line of the previous cinquain repeated as first line of the next cinquain
  • Note: The final line of the last cinquain does not have to equal the first line of the first cinquain, but it is an option.

For example: “You can call me darling” © Lawrencealot

“Once we’ve
come to know each
other and shared a meal
or drink, a wink, or even more
a kiss,

a kiss
even on the cheek,
or put each other down
in fun with social repartee
well then …

well then
you might call me
darling and I’d not flinch.
It’s a sweet affectation, beats
Hey you!

Hey you
works, and implies
perhaps you know me not
yet by name, and darling implies
much more.

Much more—
yet everyone
is your darling, even those I know
are rude and lacking very much
to like.

To like
me and call me
darling has its merits.
Do you want to call me, darling?
Call me.

Once you have published your poem, add it to the Mr Linky below so that others can read it. Then go visiting others as that is half the enjoyment of our dVerse gatherings.