The quintain is a category of poetic forms with five lines, including cinquain, limerick, cinqku, quintilla, and lanterne. Adelaide Crapsey developed the modern cinquain format, while the instructional cinquain ignores syllable count. The limerick is a humorous form, while lesser-known forms include cinqku, quintilla, and lanterne. Robert Frost has used variations of the quintain in his work.
Quintain refers to a category of poetic forms that have five lines, including cinquain, limerick, cinqku, quintilla, and lanterne. Cinquain was originally defined as any poem or stanza with a total of five lines. Modern usage of the term typically specifies a specific format, leaving quintana as the descriptor for anything that falls into the category of five-line works. The most commonly recognized quintain may be the humorous folk limerick, but it is also found in the work of serious poets such as Robert Frost.
The modern form of the cinquain was developed by poet Adelaide Crapsey, introduced in her 1915 collection of poems. This format used a steadily increased syllabic count, rising from two syllables to eight and then abruptly reducing to two syllables in the final line. Crapsey’s cinquain form typically avoids trailing rhymes.
Another form of cinquain which is often taught in primary schools is known as the instructional cinquain. This form ignores syllable count, instead providing guidelines for the number of words in each line. In one version, there is a one-word title naming the subject of the poem, followed by a line containing two adjectives describing the subject of the title. The next line offers an informative sentence containing three words and the next line provides four words evoking emotions related to the topic. A trailing line indicates a word equivalent to the title word.
The limerick is a humorous form of five-line quintana that has been used for centuries. Many limericks use crude language or sexual connotations that make them unprintable in mainstream venues. Some scholars see the limerick as a means of transgressing social values through the verbal violation of taboos.
Lesser known forms of quintana include cinqku, quintilla, and lanterne. Cinqku, a form originated by poet Denis Garrison, blends the tanka and cinquain formats to produce a five-line poem with 17 total syllables. A Spanish format called quintilla uses five lines of eight syllables each, in which there can be only one rhyming couplet. The form lanterne employs a specific syllabic pattern, and typically each line in a lanterne is intended as a complete sentence in its own right.
A well-known poet who has employed the quintana form in his work is Robert Frost. His poems often incorporate some variation on the quintana. Examples of Frost’s poems that use a unique version of the standard five-line form include The Road Not Taken and Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.
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