Mom’s Musings

Recently I was looking through Write Source 2000: A Guide to Writing, Thinking, & Learning, a reference book that we use at the middle school. Since I’m interested in poetry, I meandered on over to that section of the book and came across a fun and easy poetry form called the CINQUAIN.

There are two ways to compose this non-rhyming poem of five lines, by SYLLABLES or by WORDS.

For the SYLLABLE CINQUAIN, the pattern goes this way:

First line        2 syllables

Second line        4 syllables

Third line        6 syllables

Fourth line        8 syllables

Fifth line        2 syllables

Oh, just one more thing: The first line is the TITLE of your poem, and the fifth line restates the title in some way.

Here’s my example of a SYLLABLE CINQUAIN:

COFFEE

My morning drink

I pour it from the pot

Warming aroma, bitter tang

Java

For the WORD CINQUAIN, the pattern goes this way:

First line        1 word

Second line        2 words

Third line        3 words

Fourth line        4 words

Fifth line        1 word

Here’s my example of a WORD CINQUAIN:

SCRABBLE

Word game

Strategy and spelling

Fit the words together

Spell

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 8:19 am and is filed under Cinquains, Creative writing, Education, Favorite poems, Fun Things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.