Adelaide Crapsey
Adelaide Crapsey (September 9, 1878 – October 8, 1914) was an American poet. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Rochester, New York. Her parents were the businesswoman Adelaide T. Crapsey and the Episcopal priest Algernon Sidney Crapsey, who moved from New York City to Rochester.
Adelaide Crapsey
September 9, 1878
New York City, US
October 8, 1914 (aged 36)
Rochester, New York, US
Early life[edit]
Crapsey was born on September 9, 1878, in Brooklyn Heights, New York. Her parents were Algernon Sidney Crapsey and Adelaide (Trowbridge) Crapsey. She was their third child, after her brother, Philip, and her sister, Emily. Adelaide was baptized on November 1, 1878, at Trinity Church in New York City, where her father was an assistant minister. Before she was a year old, her father had become the rector of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Rochester, New York. His family followed him to Rochester from New York City on the canal boat.[1]
In Rochester, Adelaide attended the public schools.[2]
Poetic influence[edit]
In the years immediately before her death, she wrote much of the verse on which her reputation rests. Her interest in rhythm and meter led her to create a unique variation[28] on the cinquain (or quintain), a 5-line form of 22 syllables influenced by the Japanese haiku and tanka.[29] Her five-line cinquain (now styled as an American cinquain)[30] has a generally iambic meter defined as "one-stress, two-stress, three-stress, four-stress and suddenly back to one-stress"[31] and normally consists of 2 syllables in the first and last lines and 4, 6 and 8 syllables in the middle three lines, as shown in the poem Niagara.[32] Marianne Moore said of her poetic style, "Crapsey's apartness and delicately differentiated footfalls, her pallor and color were impressive."[33]
