Lee Bennett Hopkins shares a research piece from 1967 about Adelaide Crapsey, poet and inventor of the cinquain. Click here to download the free PDF.
Special thanks to Paige Bentley-Flannery, librarian and poetry advocate in Bend, Oregon, for her assistance in locating this article.
Poetry at Play 
I am amazed that after four decades this article can now be read by so many more readers than it has ever had before.
I hope this serves to clarify the many misconceptions regarding the cinquain.
And I THANK Steven for being able to find this article.
In honor of Adelaide (and Lee), here is a mirror cinquain — a cinquain followed by a reverse cinquain — from my yet-to-be-published collection, Life at the Aquarium.
LOBSTER
Homarus americanus
By Steven Withrow
Armored
And charging forth
With jousting lance and shield,
Like a lost knight of Atlantis,
Hungry
For fight
And a bite of poor sea urchin,
What strange crustacean king
Might have dubbed you
Sir Claw?
I receive a “poem a day” from Poets.Org, so last month one of Adelaide Crapsey’s poems, “Amaze” was featured. The one I chose to teach to my 3rd graders, though, was “November Night”. The children have learned it by heart. It ends with these two beautiful lines
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.
And now I can tell the children more about this wonderful poet! Thank you Steve for sharing this.