Japanese
Roots of the American Cinquain
By Judith Ecker Budreau
In the last issue of AMAZE, part one of this essay looked at the
history of the five line poetry form known as American cinquain,
specifically the format developed c. 1910 by the American poet, Adelaide
Crapsey, who believed she had created a poetry form uniquely suited to the
English language. Part two looks at the ancient Japanese roots of the
American cinquain, and considers the possibilities and limitations that
contemporary poets find with the evolving cinquain form.
There is good evidence that Adelaide Crapsey studied French
translations of Japanese tanka and haiku in Michel Revon's Anthologie
de la Litterature Japonais (1910). Scholars believe she may also have
read a translation of Ogura Hyahunin Isshu, an anthology of 100
different poems written by 100 different Japanese poets between the
seventh and thirteenth centuries, or may have read English literary
criticism of the collection.
She probably did not study or understand the complicated parameters of waka,
tanka, renga, hokku, and haiku, their centuries-old lineage and
their relationship to each other. At least, nothing in her extensive
papers suggests a study of this sort. But she was certainly aware of and
interested in the brief, bare syllables of tanka and haiku,
working out her translations in the same way she labored over her study of
monosyllabic and polysyllabic words in English poetry.
Crapsey translated at least eight of the haiku in Revon's book,
some of which were inspired by Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902). This Japanese
poet revived haiku by separating the opening three lines of 5-7-5
phonetic units from a longer poem. An agnostic, he separated haiku
from the Buddhist-influenced poetry of the famed Matsu Basho. Shiki was
fascinated with Western culture, especially French Impressionist painters,
and saw his poetry as a sketch of nature much like Impressionist
paintings. He also revived the waga (story or song) poem tradition
by advocating for the tanka (meaning short poem) form. One of his haiku
is inscribed on a stone pillar at the Horyu-ji (Learning Temple of the
Flourishing Law) in Nara Prefecture, Japan. As is traditional with haiku,
it is untitled:
I bite into a persimmon
and a bell resounds -
Horyu-ji
French translations of Shiki's and others' work was available to
Crapsey, in the library at Smith College, for example, where she taught.
These, then, are the principles of Japanese tanka and haiku
which Adelaide Crapsey would probably have known from her readings of
these forms in translation:
Haiku evolved from the older hokku, where substance was more
important than form, and where religious overtones were expected. The
relatively new haiku form (late 1800s), with its use of sentimental
or comic subject matter, is sometimes mocked by those who appreciate
Japan's ancient poetic traditions. Westerners have had a field day with
the haiku form, creating baseball haiku (which, perhaps not
ironically, became popular in Japan) and Spam-ku, haiku composed
from lines of e-mail spam, and sci-fi-ku for fans of science fiction.
Tanka evolved from the longer waga (story or song) poems,
and continues to evolve as more poets practice the form in more languages.
In 2002, in an address to the National Diet, Japanese Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi quoted a tanka urging thought for the future and
for the nation's children. It remains a tradition in Japan to respond with
a tanka when someone writes you a haiku.
Today, poets create haiku and tanka in their native
languages, and write about subjects ranging far from the focus on the
natural world and on human nature of traditional Japanese poetry. The
Internet spreads new work and critiques and criticisms, making possible
the formation of communities of poets and readers who share an interest in
tanka and haiku. While the Internet has certainly served a
purpose in increasing the spread of humorous and irreverent haiku
and other short verse forms - because, after all, playing with language is
what we humans do - in the more serious forums, poets urge each other to
pay attention to craftsmanship, and celebrate the successful use of the
traditional forms to convey new ideas and themes.
We see some combination of the principles of haiku and tanka
in most of Crapsey's cinquains - though in almost every case, a dimension
of her meaning would be lost without the cinquain's title, which often
serves as a sixth line, in contrast to untitled haiku and tanka,
which typically must stand on the contents of their lines alone. Here is
the text of one of Crapsey's cinquains:
And here it is with Crapsey's title. The grey cloak of fate becomes a
tissue of silver when fate is defied:
FATE DEFIED (Verse c.1915)
As it
Were tissue of silver
I'll wear, O fate, thy grey,
And go mistily radiant, clad
Like the moon.
Debra Woolard Bender's 2005 essay for World Haiku Review makes the
argument that Adelaide Crapsey opened American sensibilities to haiku a
decade before the better-known Amy Lowell and the Imagists like Ezra
Pound. Bender opens with a cinquain she composed:
CHALLENGE
So why
Discuss cinquain
With poets of haiku...
Or speak of any other poem
At all?
Bender writes, "As poets endeavoring to write haiku in
non-Japanese language, we would do well to examine and understand how the
genre continues to affect literature outside Japan-avoiding the pitfall of
becoming so ingrown, one-sided or cliquish as to exclude the 'offspring':
hybrid styles, analogues, new forms and ideas influenced by haiku."
Well said! And surely in keeping with Crapsey's own esteem for poetic
experimentation. In the three short years, 1911-1914, during which she
wrote more than two dozen cinquains, we see her craftsmanship with
alliteration, metaphor, and her ever-present turning point at the last
line, what Toleos (2005) calls "the physics of the poetry… the
accumulation of energy in lines 1-4, followed by the inevitable collapse
in the fifth line." He considers this "turn" an essential
part of the American cinquain. Here is a cinquain with Crapsey's original
punctuation from the first edition of Verse (1915):
NIGHT WINDS
The old
Old winds that blew
When chaos was, what do
They tell the clattered trees that I
Should weep?
We notice that the lines of each of Crapsey's cinquains use initial
capitalization, unlike traditional Japanese haiku and tanka,
which can appear written on a single line. Haiku and tanka
written in, as opposed to translated into, English, are almost always
written in lined form: 3 lines for haiku, 5 for tanka, with
their requisite syllable counts.
Bender notes that Crapsey "adapted the haiku technique of
superimposing, or juxtaposing, images" and agrees that "the
turn, or 'twist', which may lead the reader to heightened awareness,
perception of truth or surprise, is usually accomplished at the end of the
poem's 4th line, leading to the 5th as the 'punch'. A good cinquain can
leave an aftertaste to be savored, a sense of discovery and satisfaction
for the reader like that of haiku" (2005). Crapsey, then, drew on the
spareness of haiku and tanka, but expanded haiku's
traditional thought-filled pause to a more dramatic suspension.
In his 2005 study of cinquains, Aaron Toleos concluded that Crapsey's
trademark "twist" at line 4 or 5 is an essential part of the
American cinquain. Denis Garrison, editor emeritus of the cinquain webzine
AMAZE, wrote, " 'turns' that occur at or immediately before the 5th
line, while this was an important criterion to Crapsey…appears to be
less important to a significant coterie of poets" (2002).
Perusing the pages of AMAZE, we see cinquains with and without the twist
at line 5, with and without titles. We see mirror cinquains, butterfly
cinquains, cinquains in the haiga tradition, merging art and text
on the page. Each is beautifully crafted, and each draws from both ancient
Japanese poetic traditions and from the "physics" of modern
English. If we are left with less than definitive parameters for the
American cinquain, we can at least appreciate the continued poetic
experimentation which Ms. Crapsey so valued.
WORKS CITED:
Alkalay-Gut, K. (1988). Alone in the Dawn: The Life of Adelaide Crapsey.
Athens: University of Georgia.
AMAZE: The Cinquain Journal Retrieved from http://members.aol.com/acinquain/index.html
Bender, D.W. (2005). Japanese haiku to American cinquain. World Haiku
Review. Retrieved June 15, 2007 from http://www.worldhaikureview.org/2-1/whcessay_cinquaindb.shtml
Crapsey, A. (1915). Verse. Rochester: Manas Press. (Kessinger reprint)
Garrison, D. (Spring/Summer 2002). "An introduction to the American
cinquain." Amaze 1 (1). Retrieved June 15, 2007 from
http://members.aol.com/acinquain/vol_1_no_1/v1n1articleDG.html
Keene, D., Ed. (1955). Anthology of Japanese Literature from the Earliest
Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century. Grove Press.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. "What's Up Around the Prime
Minister?" Retrieved August 14, 2007 from http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/koizumiphoto/2002/02/04sisei_e.html
Shiki, M. (1997) Masaoka Shiki: Selected Poems, Burton Watson, Trans. New
York: Columbia University Press.
Toleos, A. (2005). "The Crapsey cinquian and its variations."
Retrieved June 15, 2007 from http://cinquain.org
University of Virginia Library, Japanese Text Iniative. "Ogura
Hyakunin Isshu, 100 Poems by 100 Poets." Retrieved July 10, 2007 from
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/hyakunin/index.html
