-:- Poetic Styles -:- | Keys to Analyzing a Poem? | Meter? | Controlling Image? | Interpret Poems? | Understanding Poems? | Memorize a Poem? | Symbol in Poetry? | Anapestic Line? | Imagist? | Concrete Poem? | Antiphonal Poetry? | Bio-Poem? | Cinquain? | Anglo-Saxon Verse? | Diamante Poetry? | Epic Poem? | Found Poem? | Haiku? | Limerick? | List Poem? | Free Verse? | Heroic Poetry? | Georgian Poetry? | Magnetar, an Existential Think Tank (...includes a Poetry forum!)

• All Poetic Styles
• 100 Poems of Love
• Quotes by Poets
• Meet all the Poets
• I can't write Poetry!
• Publish Your Poetry!

A cinquain is a poem consisting of stanzas with five lines. Each line has a different number of syllables in this pattern:

2 syllables
4 syllables
6 syllables
8 syllables
2 syllables.

Here is an example from John Hollander's "Rhyme's Reason":

Cinquains
Have lines of four
Syllables, six, and eight,
Ending, as starting, with a line
Of two;

But when
Iambs align
To the trained ear these seem
To form a line of twelve, and then
Often.

Cinquains
In English verse
Were devised by a bard
Whose name (alas!) was Adelaide
Crapsey.