Adelaide Crapsey (1878 – 1914) invented a form called American cinquain based on Japanese tanka. Instead of a syllabic form (5-7-5-7-7 in the tanka) the cinquain is based on stress patterns with a 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 1 stress pattern. The pattern is often iambic (two syllables, with the second syllable stressed, as in Shakespeare’s sonnets).  Ms. Crapsey (I think correctly) decided that English is better suited to a stress-pattern form than a syllabic form. Here’s an example:

Triad
These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow… the hour
Before the dawn… the mouth of one
Just dead.

Here’s the stress pattern:

These be                                                                      duh DA (1)
Three silent things:                                                    duh DA / duh DA (2)
The falling snow… the hour                                      duh DA / duh DA / duh DA (3)
Before the dawn… the mouth of one                     DA duh / duh DA / duh DA / duh DA (4)      
Just dead.                                                                    duh DA (1)

More American cinquains by Adelaide Crapsey:

The Warning

Just now,
Out of the strange
Still dusk . . . as strange, as still . . .
A white moth flew . . . Why am I grown
So cold?

November Night

Listen…
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.

Susanna and the Elders

“Why do
You thus devise
Evil against her?” “For that
She is beautiful, delicate;
Therefore.”

Addendum Regarding Ezra Pound:

Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972)

Pound’s definition of the image was influenced by Chinese and Japanese poetry. His definition of the image: “that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.” Pound is usually credited with founding the imagist / modernist school of poetry and bringing Chinese and Japanese poetry to the awareness of Western poets. That’s probably just because Adelaide Crapsey died young of TB.

Pound defined the tenets of Imagist poetry as:

I. Direct treatment of the “thing,” whether subjective or objective.
II. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
III. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

Here is Ezra Pound’s most influential imagist poem:

              In a Station of the Metro

              The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
              Petals on a wet, black bough.

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