Lost Modernist Women: Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914)
by Ryan Elston
[Editor’s Note: To read the first article in this series, “Lost Modernist Women: Viola Paradise,” click here.]
Ryan Elston Presents - Lost Modernist Women: Adelaide Crapsey, Imagist Poet How to introduce this overlooked genius who transformed poetry and left us too soon? Her name was Adelaide Crapsey (unfortunate name), and she dared to invent a new form. Five lines: two syllables, followed by four, then six, then eight, finished with two more – the cinquain. Such an original and innovative new structure to succinctly express the self! Did she predict the tweet, the text message? Poet and prophet, so far ahead of her time. Only age 36 when tuberculosis claimed her in 1914, yet she lived. What a remarkable life! She taught, she traveled, and she wrote, despite her chronic fatigue. She left a book of verse, a treatise on metrics, and her revolutionary cinquain. Her words and images shimmer, startle, provoke. Haunting and resonant, they stay with you. Dearest Adelaide, we thank and honor you. May you be remembered. May your words be read. ****
NIAGARA by Adelaide Crapsey Seen on a Night in November How frail Above the bulk Of crashing water hangs, Autumnal, evanescent, wan, The moon. NOVEMBER NIGHT by Adelaide Crapsey Listen . . . With faint dry sound, Like steps of passing ghosts, The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees And fall. TRIAD by Adelaide Crapsey These be Three silent things: The falling snow . . . the hour Before the dawn . . . the mouth of one Just dead. RELEASE by Adelaide Crapsey With swift Great sweep of her Magnificent arm my pain Clanged back the doors that shut my soul From life. NIGHT WINDS by Adelaide Crapsey The old Old winds that blew When chaos was, what do They tell the clattered trees that I Should weep? ROMA AETERNA by Adelaide Crapsey The sun Is warm to-day, O Romulus, and on Thine olden Palatine the birds Still sing. BLUE HYACINTHS by Adelaide Crapsey In your Curled petals what ghosts Of blue headlands and seas, What perfumed immortal breath sighing Of Greece. THE GRAND CANYON by Adelaide Crapsey By Zeus! Shout word of this To the eldest dead! Titans, Gods, Heroes, come who have once more A home! MOON-SHADOWS by Adelaide Crapsey Still as On windless nights The moon-cast shadows are, So still will be my heart when I Am dead. THE WARNING by Adelaide Crapsey Just now, Out of the strange Still dusk . . . as strange, as still . . . A white moth flew. Why am I grown So cold?
Ryan,
Your poetic
tribute to Adelaide
is truly a remarkable
cinquain.