Thanksgiving and the Cinquain

If you occur to reside in Canada, you have currently celebrated the Thanksgiving vacation on October 12th. In the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving separately from Columbus Day (recognized in some U.S. communities as Indigenous Peoples' Day or el Dia de la Raza). This year it occurs to fall on November 26. As Thanksgiving approaches, the type of writing that often springs to my thoughts is the cinquain.

Cinquains, an Americanized version of the standard Japanese haiku type, are 5-line poems. They consist of a single line of 2 syllables, 1 line of 4 syllables, one particular line of six syllables, 1 line of eight syllables, and a final line of 2 syllables.

What do cinquains have to do with Thanksgiving? I discovered the cinquain kind in the course of the 2006 Thanksgiving Day service at St. Paul's, the Episcopal church across the river from my property. Father David Ottsen, St. Paul's pastor at the time, is As well a gifted poet, and he utilised the cinquain as a platform to express gratitude to the Greater Energy. One particular of the fascinating items about the Episcopal church and its sister church overseas, the Anglican church, is its intimate connection with the English language. The great English poet John Milton was Too an Anglican clergyman. If there was an official religion of English-language poetry, it would be Anglicanism.

But back to the poetry. Here are 4 cinquains I wrote to commemorate Thanksgiving 2006:

1. My niece
Playful, giggling
Fingers are in olives
Expecting Santa Claus tonight
Sorry

2. Infant
Crawling, drooling
Playing with a turkey
Chews a photo of her grandpa
My dad

three. The day
Thankful, grateful
As well a lot of cranberries
Crowd out the mashed sweet potatoes
No far more

four. This day
Thankful, grateful
People we enjoy collect
Consuming, laughing, speaking, drinking
Then pie

Now it really is your turn! Turn the cinquain toward your personal Thanksgiving celebration, use it to express your personal thankfulness, or any other topic you'd really like to take on. The haiku is traditionally about nature, but the possibilities of the cinquain are endless.

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