Cinquain Workshop

From mid-February to mid-March 2002, Denis Garrison and Deborah Kolodji, conducted a highly successful Cinquain Workshop and Contest for members of WHCshortverses. In the two previous issues of World Haiku Review, we presented winners of the Cinquain Contest (Volume 2, Issue 1, March 2002), and the first lesson and exercise of the workshop (Volume 2, Issue 2, July 2002). In this issue, we are pleased to present the second lesson with several examples from the exercise, which was to employ alliteration in cinquain. In the March 2002 issue, we plan to feature the 3rd exercise with participant-examples of polystanzaic cinquain.

Cinquain Workshop - Alliteration Exercise

Deborah P. Kolodji

Editor of Amaze

Moderator of CinquainPoets

The aim of the second exercise of the WHCshortverses Cinquain Workshop was to write a cinquain that effectively employed the use of alliteration (in all forms) and/or assonance. We explored ways these literary devices could be used as means of linking associated words. As a short form, the cinquain does not lend itself to complex rhyme schemes, but the use of alliteration and assonance seems to flow naturally within a cinquain structure.

Alliteration is a poetic device deploying a recurrence of consonant sounds in neighboring words. Assonance, likewise, uses the repetition of vowel sounds within a short passage of verse.

John Drury's "The Poetry Dictionary", breaks down alliteration even further, defining "alliteration" specifically as a repetition of initial consonant sounds, "consonance" as a repetition of consonant sounds at the end of the words ("thick creek"), "parallel alliteration" or "cross alliteration" as a weaving of consonant sounds ("cranberry muffins, crinkle mouths" - repeating the "c/m" combination of sounds), and "hidden" or "internal" alliteration, where a consonant sound scheme in the middle of words is repeated ("hidden middle" has a double "d" in the middle). Drury maintains that alliteration "serves to link associated words, to tighten the structure of the poem..."

The first time I read Adelaide Crapsey's cinquain, "Triad", I wondered why she used the article, "the", so many times. Usually, I think of "the" as a very weak word, adding little to a poem, and it is on my short list of words I try to avoid using in cinquains. Yet, in "Triad", it works and I believe the reason is alliteration.

Triad

These be

Three silent things:

The falling snow...the hour

Before the dawn...the mouth of one

Just dead.

Adelaide Crapsey

When "Triad" is read aloud, the "th" sound comes out and seems to flow through the poem in a way that is pleasing on my tongue:

These-Three-things-The-the-the-the-mouth.

In addition, Ms Crapsey uses assonance. The first three words in this cinquain all have a long "e" sound:

These be three

In the first (Valentine) exercise, Gary Blankenship submitted the following poem :

Beneath the Words

Candy

covered cherries.

Too sweet bites hide even

sweeter surprises as do your

whispers.

Gary Blankenship

Gary starts off with the hard "c" sound, juxtaposed in "Candy covered". As the poem progresses, the "s" sound emerges at the beginning, at the end, and in the middle of words:

cherries-sweet-bites-sweeter-surprises-as-whispers

as the harsher vowel sounds in the beginning soften into the whisper of his final word, appropriately "whispers". The juxtaposition of "bites/hide" and "even/sweeter" also employs assonance effectively.

A sampling of the cinquains submitted as part of the alliteration exercise:

Dear Diary

In pink

ink the cinquain

slips from pen to paper;

my feelings revealed in loving

color.

naia