Adelaide Crapsey

thumb|Adelaide Crapsey (circa 1900) Adelaide Crapsey (9 September 1878 – 8 October 1914) was an American poet. In the years before her death, she wrote much of the verse on which her reputation rests. Her interest in rhythm and meter led her to create a variation on the cinquain (or quintain), a five-line form of twenty-two syllables influenced by the Japanese haiku and tanka. Her cinquain has a generally iambic meter and consists of two syllables in the first and last lines and four, six and eight syllables in the middle three lines. Quotes My object to venture the suggestion that an important application of phonetics to metrical problems lies in the study of phonetic word-structure. A Study in English Metrics Alfred Knopf New York 1918. Verses (1915) The oldOld winds that blewWhen chaos was, what doThey tell the clattered trees that IShould weep? "Night Winds". These beThree silent things:The falling snow...the hourBefore the dawn...the mouth of oneJust dead. Triad. Listen.With faint dry sound,Like steps of passing ghosts,The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the treesAnd fall. November Night. I knowNot these my handsAnd yet I think there wasA woman like me once had handsLike these. Amaze External links Category:1878 births Category:1914 deaths Category:Women academics from the United States Category:19th-century poets from the United States Category:Journalists from New York City Category:Literary critics Category:Critics from the United States Category:Women authors from the United States Category:Poets from New York City