Saturday, August 19, 2006

Saturday Cinquains

This semester, Becca and Philip are studying poetry in their co-op writing class. I've enjoyed reading their imaginative efforts! This past week, they worked on cinquains. A cinquain is a five line poem or stanza which follows a specific pattern. The cinquains they wrote are 1 word, 2 words, 3 words, 4 words, 1 word. Some lines are supposed to be adjectives, other lines are verbs, and so on. Here is a cinquain by Philip:

Pig
Fat, Short
Eating, Playing, Snorting
Lying in the mud
Bacon

And one by Becca:

Doll
Pretty, Cute
Dressing, Combing, Playing
Fun to collect
American Girls

And just for fun, I wrote one too! I followed the 2-4-6-8-2 syllable pattern, but in its strictest form, the cinquain is supposed to be:

1 word title (noun)- 2 syllables
2 descriptive words (adjectives) - 4 syllables
3 words that express action- 6 syllables
4 words that express feeling- 8 syllables
1 word (synonyms or reference to title in line 1)- 2 syllables

I didn't do that- too much work! My cinquain is in honor of the day's task:

Laundry
Mountains of Clothes
Sorting, Washing, Drying
Folding, Sorting, Hanging, Ironing
Endless

1 comment:

Katherine@Raising Five said...

I'm going to post this above my Maytag. At least if it's poetic sounding, "endless" has a romantic air to it!