Oh the immeasurable beauty that is simplicity, and yet Adelaide Crapsey has captured it adeptly. A poet perhaps best known for her creation of the cinquain and her compressed lyrics, Crapsey spent all of her life in pursuit of her art, developing her own unique style as a blend of emerging the American free-verse and the nature themed methods of the Japanese tanka and haiku. It was the condensed language and ceremonial artistic philosophies of the Japanese poets that so inspired Crapsey. From these ideals Crapsey created the Cinquain composed of five unrhymed lines that abided by a strict accentual-syllabic requirement. Yet, |
Raw and refreshing, Crapsey’s verse is pure and unadulterated by hidden political slanders, religious beliefs, allegories or other psychological fluff. Imbued with a distinctly Shinto innateness, and respect for the modesty of the natural world, “November Nights,” is no frivolous literary easter egg hunt, it is instead akin to a brisk late autumn evening or the striking change in the colors that comes with the season: visually delightful in its lucidity. Her free verse is faultless: like all free verse has no established syllabillic or rhythmic structure. Crapsey, like the classic Japanese poets doesn’t bother with her own original rhyme scheme, she is well aware her poetry is in no need of something as mundane and stereotypical as similar sounding ends to words. She is in no hurry to taint her poem with childish or tawdry verse, her composition is already alluring and bursting with eloquence and poise, that no ordinary poem would contain. Her poetry is not playful or audacious, it is wise and mature beyond its brevity, it is dignified and gentlie. Contained within 22 syllables, Crapsey’s poem builds itself up line by line: first two syllables, then four, with a climax of 6 then back to four, and four again, before the final descent to two. Similar to her later cinquain but not directly proportional.
Poetry regarding the natural world requires no deeper meaning, it is already as abstractly spiritual and existential as it is possible to be, there is nothing more wondrous or profound than the unsullied cycles of the universe: and “November Nights” is a perfect expression of this. The language and theme are crystalline, not shallow but pristinely clear down to their very acutest translation, undefiled by literary enigmas, extensive metaphors or trivial analogies. Purely pleasurable in the simplicity of it’s address of such universal themes, relaxingly cadenced and refreshingly non-traditional, soft rhythmic and yet with contrastingly crisp language.
Everything about “November Nights” feels prudent and adds subtlety to the ambience of the poem as a whole. “Listen . . .” to every word following, feel the deliberation and poise, let the unbroken tone consume you “with faint, dry sound,” soft words easy on the ears: “Like the steps of a passing ghost,” a simultaneously eery and stoically beautiful simile that conveys the bittersweet and imminent allure of nature. “The leaves, frost crisp’d,” grant Crapsey’s reader a perfect picture of the vivid hues and rigid shape of the autumn’s rain as it “break[s] from the trees and fall[s].” The imagery is so elemental, here stripped to it’s bone it is at its most refined beauty, the reader practically shivers from the chill of the brisk autumn air, all the while relishing in it’s freshness. The only analogy in Crapsey’s work seems to be one to her own verse, composed, light, almost coldly exquisite, her poem is, in and of itself an autumn night in miniature.
Deeply satisfying and wholly tranquil, Adelaide Crapsey’s poem is beautiful and composed. Refreshingly untraditional in its free verse arrangement, despite its reminiscence of a form of poetry that precursors even the Greeks. Timelessly traditional in it’s classic address of natural’s imperishable grace( particularly the seasonal variety that softly bites). Crapsey’s writing is radiant, eloquent and simply scintillating with superlative language decisions: from her germane adjectives, to her simile that could not better embody the mood. “November Nights” is an undyingly glorious tribute to the storm of kaleidoscopic foliage that is carried once a year on a crisp breeze, light as the “ . . . steps of a passing ghost.”