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The Complete Poems and Collected Letters of Adelaide Crapsey
This book presents the poetry and letters of the American writer Adelaide Crapsey (1878–1914). Her best poetry deserves to be enjoyed by a larger audience, and her letters and newly discovered biographical materials reveal new charm and meaning in an intriguingly elusive character.
Crapsey did not live to see any of her mature poetry she received notice that her first poem had been accepted for publication only a week before she died. Posthumous editions of her Verse (in 1915, 1922, and 1934), however, brought her recognition and respect. Carl Sandburg paid her a poetic tribute. American critic Yvor Winters praised her as “a minor poet of great distinction” and felt that her poems remained “in their way honest and acutely perceptive.”
Her best work is compressed, terse, related in this respect to the work of another American poet who won posthumous recognition, Emily Dickinson. Crapsey is best known as the inventor of the cinquain , a poem of five short lines of unequal one-stress, two-stress, three-stress, four-stress, and one-stress. The cinquain is one of the few modern verse forms developed in English, and its brevity and characteristic thought pattern seem to have been influenced by Japanese forms. Crapsey’s indebtedness to Japanese poetry and her relation to Imagism have long been subjects for debate. As Winters notes, the work of Crapsey “achieves more effectively than did almost any of the Imagists the aims of Imagism.” The critical introduction by Professor Susan Sutton Smith examines these problems.
Much of Crapsey’s poetry is reticent, withdrawn, and private, and she believed strongly in the individual’s right to privacy. Whatever new biographical materials reveal of her and of her relations with family and friends, however, shows a charming and courageous woman. Her courage and humor show especially well in her correspondence with her friend Esther Lowenthal and in the letters with her friend Jean Webster McKinney, author of Daddy Long-Legs , who died soon after Crapsey.
Crapsey did not live to see any of her mature poetry she received notice that her first poem had been accepted for publication only a week before she died. Posthumous editions of her Verse (in 1915, 1922, and 1934), however, brought her recognition and respect. Carl Sandburg paid her a poetic tribute. American critic Yvor Winters praised her as “a minor poet of great distinction” and felt that her poems remained “in their way honest and acutely perceptive.”
Her best work is compressed, terse, related in this respect to the work of another American poet who won posthumous recognition, Emily Dickinson. Crapsey is best known as the inventor of the cinquain , a poem of five short lines of unequal one-stress, two-stress, three-stress, four-stress, and one-stress. The cinquain is one of the few modern verse forms developed in English, and its brevity and characteristic thought pattern seem to have been influenced by Japanese forms. Crapsey’s indebtedness to Japanese poetry and her relation to Imagism have long been subjects for debate. As Winters notes, the work of Crapsey “achieves more effectively than did almost any of the Imagists the aims of Imagism.” The critical introduction by Professor Susan Sutton Smith examines these problems.
Much of Crapsey’s poetry is reticent, withdrawn, and private, and she believed strongly in the individual’s right to privacy. Whatever new biographical materials reveal of her and of her relations with family and friends, however, shows a charming and courageous woman. Her courage and humor show especially well in her correspondence with her friend Esther Lowenthal and in the letters with her friend Jean Webster McKinney, author of Daddy Long-Legs , who died soon after Crapsey.
Hardcover
Published January 1, 1977
About the author
Adelaide Crapsey
153 books9 followersPoet. Daughter of Algernon Sidney Crapsey.
In the years before her untimely death from tuberculosis, she wrote much of the verse on which her reputation rests. Her interest in rhythm and meter led her to create a unique variation on the cinquain (or quintain), a 5-line form of 22 syllables influenced by the Japanese haiku and tanka.
Her five-line cinquain (now styled as an American cinquain) has a generally iambic meter defined as 'one-stress, two-stress, three-stress, four-stress and suddenly back to one-stress' and normally consists of 2 syllables in the first and last lines and 4, 6 and 8 syllables in the middle three lines, as shown in the poem Niagara.
Marianne Moore said of her poetic style 'Crapsey's apartness and delicately differentiated footfalls, her pallor and color were impressive'.
In the years before her untimely death from tuberculosis, she wrote much of the verse on which her reputation rests. Her interest in rhythm and meter led her to create a unique variation on the cinquain (or quintain), a 5-line form of 22 syllables influenced by the Japanese haiku and tanka.
Her five-line cinquain (now styled as an American cinquain) has a generally iambic meter defined as 'one-stress, two-stress, three-stress, four-stress and suddenly back to one-stress' and normally consists of 2 syllables in the first and last lines and 4, 6 and 8 syllables in the middle three lines, as shown in the poem Niagara.
Marianne Moore said of her poetic style 'Crapsey's apartness and delicately differentiated footfalls, her pallor and color were impressive'.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 15, 2012
Read a handful of Crapsey's elegantly distilled cinquins that felt lost among the endless pages of a large anthology and was immediately impressed and enamored—here was a poet who seemed to embody all of the qualities of Imagism without having any known knowledge or contact with H.D., Pound, Lowell, Aldington and others would make it one of the most recognizable poetic advances in 20th century poetry.
Turns out there are just over a two dozen cinquains in existence, for unfortunately Crapsey died of tuberculosis 1914 at the horrifyingly young age of 36. Her reputation rests solely on the clipped 5 line cinquain that she developed, which many have mistakenly assumed are based on the haiku, tanka and other forms found in traditional Japanese poetry, but are actually rooted in Crapsey's extensive work on English language prosody, particularly Keats. But the best of the cinquains still feel radically, innovatively modernist, which is why Crapsey has been characterized as an "unintentional Imagist," which might or might not do her unique poetic innovations justice.
...
My two personal favorites:
"Niagra
Seen on a night in November"
How frail
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs,
Autumnal, evanescent, wan,
the Moon.
"November Night"
Listen..
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.
...
Susan Sutton Smith has brought together all of the available material related to Crapsey, and tellingly, it all fits into a modest-sized volume. I only lightly perused the rest of the poetry, which is of the traditional late-Romantic sort that still lingered around after the turn of the century, but several excerpts I've read are lovely, so I do plan to return someday to give it a more thorough read. Smith's well-researched biography and critical assessments are also insightful and accessible.
A wonderful find, I just wish there was more.
Turns out there are just over a two dozen cinquains in existence, for unfortunately Crapsey died of tuberculosis 1914 at the horrifyingly young age of 36. Her reputation rests solely on the clipped 5 line cinquain that she developed, which many have mistakenly assumed are based on the haiku, tanka and other forms found in traditional Japanese poetry, but are actually rooted in Crapsey's extensive work on English language prosody, particularly Keats. But the best of the cinquains still feel radically, innovatively modernist, which is why Crapsey has been characterized as an "unintentional Imagist," which might or might not do her unique poetic innovations justice.
...
My two personal favorites:
"Niagra
Seen on a night in November"
How frail
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs,
Autumnal, evanescent, wan,
the Moon.
"November Night"
Listen..
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.
...
Susan Sutton Smith has brought together all of the available material related to Crapsey, and tellingly, it all fits into a modest-sized volume. I only lightly perused the rest of the poetry, which is of the traditional late-Romantic sort that still lingered around after the turn of the century, but several excerpts I've read are lovely, so I do plan to return someday to give it a more thorough read. Smith's well-researched biography and critical assessments are also insightful and accessible.
A wonderful find, I just wish there was more.
July 29, 2026
Rating this on account of the poems as I didn't have interest in going through the letters. (Though as I flipped through them, I did note and immensely enjoy Crapsey's sign-off on one rather weary letter as "Behold I flop." Marking that for later use.) The poems themselves are short and earnest things which vacillate between images of the natural world, emotive and complex connections with mythology and Christianity alike, and ruminations on death. I came to this collection for her cinquains and, while I wish there were more of these little gems, was not disappointed. As I've seen mentioned elsewhere, they work as elongated haikus, but not in the sense of a Western corruption but rather as inspired spiritual successors. I do recommend this work to anyone interested in American poetry of the early 1900s or in any of the subjects mentioned above. And, for a further exploration of cinquains, I recommend looking into the picture book "Pondering: a Story in Cinquains", by Daniel Brewer, which serves as a beautiful and poignant introduction to the form.
It is a real tragedy that Crapsey died so young and with such life left in her; while finite, the portfolio she left to the world is luminous and full of heart.
It is a real tragedy that Crapsey died so young and with such life left in her; while finite, the portfolio she left to the world is luminous and full of heart.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews