Adelaide Crapsey

Born in Brooklyn in 1878, Adelaide Crapsey became an American poet and teacher whose name is closely linked with the cinquain, a compact five-line poetic form she developed. She studied at Vassar College and later taught for a time at the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York.

Crapsey cared deeply about rhythm and poetic structure, and she spent years studying metrics alongside writing her own poems. Her best-known work is the posthumous collection Verse, which helped introduce more readers to her precise, condensed style.

She died in 1914, but her influence lasted far beyond her short life. Today she is remembered as an inventive poet whose small, carefully shaped poems opened up new possibilities for American verse.