Doublets, Cinquains and Adelaide Crapsey
October 7, 2005
An article by Brian Strand
Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914) is often considered merely a minor poet in literary circles. It is my contention that her American cinquain form and her ‘doublet’ image form raise her reputation to be an equal to the greatest of poets in the English speaking world. Why so you may ask?
My claim rests upon the creative genius of her image forms, which are better suited as a vehicle for poetic images in English than the short imported poetic formats that are now so popular. Influenced, no doubt by her studies in metrics over many years, both her cinquains and doublets were distilled through the ’sieve’ of her imagination and intellect being devised for the English language and from within the English culture. For this reason the language flow is more natural and because of their English literary heritage, without doubt seems to ‘work’ better than those devised for another culture.
From my studies and researches of her cinquain form it would appear that Adelaide prioritised her poetic form as follows:
# IMAGE/THOUGHT ..i.e. the inspiration behind the poem.
# FIVE LINES in a stress sequence pattern 1,2,3,4,1.
# SYLLABLE pattern of 2,4,6,8,2 *.
# SYMMETRY. Initial line capitals with English grammar used throughout.
* over forty percent of her cinquains did not exactly meet the 22 syllables style.
Apart from the mechanics of the form, Adelaide’s major achievement was to take the ‘imagist’ idea one stage further, introducing into the cinquain a ‘turn’ or final line ’surprise’ or ‘contrast’, that leads to a heightened awareness, or as a lasting conclusion to the poem .This aspect makes it memorable and lives with the reader.
The two line epigram has always been a popular literary device, used by many well-known writers of past eras, especially for terse and witty sayings. The novelist George Eliot for example, used the form extensively throughout her writings. It was not until the early part of the 20th century that the epigram has become recognised as a poetic form when Adelaide Crapsey created and codified it into the ‘DOUBLET’ image poem, with her beautiful poem On Seeing Weather-Beaten Trees.
The doublet image form comprises;-
# TWO LINE stanza of ten syllables per line.
# RHYME ending in last word of the second line.
# INTEGRAL title to the poem, which effectively becomes the first line, thus making the ‘doublet’ into a three line poetic form.
Over the past three decades, as Adelaide Crapsey’s work has become more widely known, her American cinquains have now become the equivalent ‘English’ form of the tanka and her doublet the ‘English’ equivalent to the three line haiku. Each of these deserves to become recognised as the pre-eminent short poetic form of English literature, truly …shorthand of the heart.
Print-On-Demand Publisher Profile: Books by Bookends
October 6, 2005
Books by Bookends is a no-frills print-on-demand (POD) publisher. Unlike some of the major corporate publishers (Lulu, iUniverse) this is a small operation run out of a bookstore in Ridgewood, New Jersey. If you are looking for publishing clout, you won’t find it here. What they do have, however, is reasonable publishing costs that beat most of the larger POD publishers.
For properly formatted books (you generally do the formatting yourself) they begin with a $175 price for your first ten books. The next ten are $125 and subsequent runs of ten are $85. This covers books of up to 250 pages. This is the fee that they charge you. You are welcome to charge whatever you want for your book. They aren’t looking for royalties.
As I said, however, this is no-frills publishing. They charge additional fees for some services but even those prices are very reasonable. An ISBN number is an additional fee of $100. Formatting is $50. Cover design is $50. Copy editing is $150 and line editing is $250.
For these prices, you get very little by way of sales support. Even sales through Amazon and Barnes & Noble are not included in this price (you are welcome to cut your own deal with these sellers though). If they set it up it costs an additional $250.
This publisher is ideal for people who are really just looking for someone to print professional-looking copies of their book. If you are only planning to produce a few copies for friends and family, or if you feel you can handle distribution and publicity on your own, this is a great publishing choice for you.
See also:
Print-On-Demand Publisher Profile: PageFree Publishing.com
Print-On-Demand Publisher Profile: iUniverse
Print-On-Demand Publisher Profile: Xlibris
