Page:

WHAT IS A CINQUAPIO?

SatInUGal
Kumar
Dangerous Mind
United States 24awards
Joined 31st Dec 2015
Forum Posts: 903

Poetry Contest

I've been messing around with a new format and since it's proven fun and fertile I figured it might be cool to do a no winner competition with it.
A cinquapio has its roots in a cinquain, which is simply a 5-line stanza. These are the rules for writing a cinquapio:

6-4-4-6-2 syllable structure

2nd line rhymes with fifth

Ideally, the lexical stress (syllabic emphasis) sounds like this:

buh BUH buh buh BUH buh
buh BUH buh BUH
buh buh BUH buh
buh BUH buh buh BUH buh
BUH BUH

Of course, without an example, that's totally meaningless, so here are two examples. See if you can make out that patter:

SAPIO

I'd rather be witty
and chaste with you
than have sex with
some beautiful dumbass—
it's true!



POTENTIAL ENERGY

A city of people
can clap and scream
all together
as brothers and sisters—
GO TEAM!

(for a third, erotic example, check out my poem "DESERT DESSERT" )

The poem above, "SAPIO," was the first one I did of these (hence the name, cinquapio). When I set out to duplicate its form, I thought it would be pretty hard. What I found was that the syllable count and the rhyme structure are a lot easier than the lexical stress. Getting that rhythm right is a pain, but a fun and worthwhile pain in my opinion.

So, if you are intrigued, let's see what you can do (and if you aren't, thanks for stopping by anyway)

-Kumar

admin
DU Webmistress
Mistress of the Underground
1awards

The thread is now locked as all endless challenges will be found in the Word Play group. You can suggest new ideas here: https://deepundergroundpoetry.com/groups/word-play/discussion/1426/

Page:
Go to: