Select
Verses from the Members of the World Haiku Club
Debi Bender, Editor
Orlando, Florida, US
Ancient Lullabye
It's there
upon the shore . . .
an ancient lullabye
that beckons me "come sleep and dream
once more."
naia
The natural, primal rhythm of a heartbeat, breath, the surf, a
song, a poem...it's there -- in a cinquain. Naia's cinquain. How like haiku. The
ancient and new harmoniously blend and contrast all at once. Environmental
nature to man's nature.
Connectivity: a
lullaby for babies to the sound of the ancient ocean. Repetition: a assonance of
short "o's" and long "e's"; an alliteration of "s's".
The womb to the sea; Mother earth...gently rocking you, lulling me, inviting us
to sleep. Mystery: Where do we come from, where do we go? Wakefulness, the
state between dreams. Music: Meter - rhythm; Analogy: rhyme - simile;
seen/hidden-wake/sleep- life/death. West - East.
On re-reading
Naia's "Ancient Lullabye" cinquain, I quickly sketched out the
meanings and feelings, above, brought up by my own associations. Generally
unrhymed, the content of both haiku and cinquain poems may often contain an
epiphany, or lend themselves to a contemplation of layered meaning or feelings
implied by associations. When combined with rhythm, a feature of chant and
music, the experience of epiphany, or realization, can seem even stronger. Like
the Japanese haiku, American cinquain is terse fixed-form, both of which enjoy a
freedom of making poetic, musical rhythms within a framework of a specific
number of beats...not a tyranny of forced syllables, but a complementary
framework. It is the various and natural rhythms contained within a form which
afford the content of words and meaning even more depth and power.
But the lullaby
cinquain is also different from haiku. While Naia's poem is grounded in nature,
it is more philosophical than yuki (seasonal) haiku, and the associations more
overtly metaphoric and/or simile. The implied surf is likened to and called a
"lullabye" -- a human song to lull infants to sleep. Unlike classic
19th/20th century haiku, the lullaby cinquain is not a simple, objective shasei
"sketch" of nature. More like tanka in this regard, the cinquain form
allows more room for the poet's personal feelings and thoughts. In this way,
"Ancient Lullabye" brings our poet's ideas about nature into the scene
as she relates them to humanity, to herself, with even a hint of personification
by a suggestion human words and motivations to the implied water's sound. In a
cinquain, there is no guideline against such prosody, and in Naia's cinquain, it
is done very well, indeed. There is a solid strength in the beautiful poem in
that it's experience is universal and seemingly ageless. Even the cadences of
the phrases and caesurae echo ocean surf and lullaby. This strength is evident,
not only because of the universality of content and meaning, but due to Naia's
skill with poetic technique in addition to the flexible containment and pleasing
cadence afforded by the cinquain's fixed-form.
Interestingly,
Naia had re-written two lines as a suggested revision of the same cinquain. The
above poem was posted to WHChaikuforumworkshop, drawing praise and commentary.
At the same time, she questioned the end rhyme in lines two and five:
"shore" and "more". Like haiku, cinquain, by its
originator's design as a poem analogous to haiku and tanka, is not generally
rhymed, at least "on purpose".
And why not rhyme,
when the a cinquain, a tanka and even an occasional haiku might be enhanced by
its use? I mention it here, in relationship to cinquain, since this genre, as an
adaptation of Japanese haiku and tanka for English language, was developed as a
non-rhyming, syllabic, metrical fixed-form analogue. While the American
cinquain, a quintet, has not been assigned the same 20th century Western
adaptations of philosophy and theoretic surrounding haiku and/or tanka, yet
because it is borne of those forms, it has become subject to the same cautions
against certain Western poetics; at least when cinquain is being written among
Western communities of haiku and tanka poets.
But back to the
cinquain...Naia had asked offlist, my opinion of her second, proposed version
which removed end rhyme from the 5th line and moved it up to the 4th, where it
becomes more of an internal rhyme due to the sentence structure:
It's there
upon the shore . . .
an ancient lullabye
that beckons me "come sleep once more
and dream."
Naia's suggested
revision would place the emphasis on dream, removing possible distraction of
overt rhyme; while placing more emphasis on the consonance of long e sounds in
me/dream. All-in-all, good ideas, but...
After studying the effects of words in both versions, Naia finally decided on
the ending, "once more". She relayed that she finds writing cinquain
with added dimensionality to be challenging, concentrating on techniques of:
1) allowing the
last line to complete the first line, i.e., the first and last lines can sum up
the poem when read as a pair, often in a new and different way: "It's
there...[the ancient lullabye]...once more"); and
2) ending the each
line carrying with words which carry the theme throughout the cinquain (i.e.,
[It's] there - shore - lullabye - dream - [once] more).
I'm glad Naia went
with her first rendering, keeping the end rhyme in the 2nd and 5th lines, where
it is stressed, and sounds natural to the music of the verse. The end rhyme is
in keeping with the rhythms of the poem: the surf, the heartbeat, the lullaby
and the implied simile: the sound of the sea is like an ancient lullaby. And
perhaps rhyme is an audible simile of sorts; the likeness of two sounds or
words. It sounds right in this poem. It adds to the strength, depth and beauty,
rather than detracts from. "Once more" as the last phrase, acts as a
subtle punch, or "aha": the realization of repetition and circle of
life..."It's there...once more."
The only
"line" to which I might suggest a change is the title, as it
"previews" the core meaning of the poem, thereby "stealing its
thunder" a bit. A title can lead into the poem or expand on or complement
the picture in some way, sometimes using words and images which are related, but
not found in the poem. This could add even further depth and dimensionality
which is being sought by the poet for her already outstanding poem.
A big thanks to
Naia for sharing her cinquain and personal explorations into technique --
studies which are important to understanding why a good poem works, and why
mediocre poem doesn't work. Hats of to Naia for fashioning this sparkling ocean
gem in cinquain. The interest and admiration among WHC poets for "Ancient
Lullabye" led to a very popular WHC Shortverses Cinquain Workshop and
Contest from mid February - mid-March 2002, led by Denis Garrison, Editor and
Deborah Kolodji, Associate Editor, of Amaze,
the Cinquain Journal.
Read
Editor's Choice: haiku
Read
Japanese Haiku to American Cinquain
Read
more cinquain in the WHCshortverses Column
Cinquain
Workshop Lesson #1
Winning
Haiku from the WHCshortverse Cinquain Contest
Read
more on cinquain & Naia's cinquain in John E. Carley's - Part One: Lost
in Translation -- extracted from: Still Waiting for the Splash - The
pursuit of form in English language haiku
Resources:
Aha!
Poetry: About Cinquain,
Jane Reichhold
State
University of New York Press: The Complete Poems and Collected Letters of
Adelaide Crapsey, Susan Sutton Smith, editor
The
Poems of Adelaide Crapsey, Karen Alkalay-Gut
Discovering
Adelaide Crapsey: Confessions of a Convert, Karen Alkalay-Gut
Amaze,
the Cinquain Journal
Women
in American History: Adelaide Crapsey, Encyclopaedia Brittanica
Bartleby.com, Carl
Sandburg, Cornhuskers, 1918:
Adelaide Crapsey
Bartleby.com Louis
Untermeyer, ed., Modern American Poetry. 1919: Adelaide Crapsey
American
Verse Project: Adelaide Crapsey
