Arbutus by ,The exotically named Adelaide Crapsey was a New York-born poet and English literature teacher whose short life was tragically cut short by tuberculosis. Her poetry output was fairly substantial but she will best be remembered by students of 19th and 20th century poets as the inventor of a writing technique called “the cinquain”.
This was probably born out of her love of the Japanese “tanka and haiku” forms of writing. It’s a kind of compressed style of writing that had many admirers including another famous writer, Ezra Pound.
Arbutus by Adelaide Crapsey
Not spring’s
Thou art, but hers,
Most cool, most virginal,
Winter’s, with thy faint breath, thy snows
Rose-tinged.
