osprey_archer: (Default)
osprey_archer ([personal profile] osprey_archer) wrote2019-01-21 08:16 am

Jean Webster & Adelaide Crapsey

As you may recall, some time ago I posted about discovering a blog about female literary friendships which was accepting guest posts. “I could write about Jean Webster and Adelaide Crapsey,” I mused.

Jean Webster wrote Daddy-Long-Legs - which I feel is long overdue a new film adaptation, one that focuses more on her intellectual development, although there would be the problem of adapting the romance to suit a modern audience. Adelaide Crapsey, meanwhile, invented the cinquain. You may have read her poems without knowing it: she’s often anthologized.

November Night

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

I wonder if I could read some of these with my coven of fourth-graders. Frost-crisp’d would undoubtedly perplex them.

ANYWAY. I wrote the essay, and it has been posted! Go feast your eyes upon its magnificence.
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[personal profile] asakiyume 2019-01-21 06:58 pm (UTC)(link)
That is a really lovely essay, and somehow I didn't know--though probably you've even said--about their early deaths. It's really sad! I think it's great that Jean managed at least to get Adelaide's one poem published, for Adelaide to enjoy, before her death, and I think it's great that their friendship was strong enough to withstand the difference in levels of success (and health) that came their way.
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[personal profile] asakiyume 2019-01-22 02:02 am (UTC)(link)
I think you could definitely do cinquains with your kids--I have a memory of doing them in school. I seem to recall being given a very clear-cut explanation of how to construct them [searches online] ... okay, that's because we were taught what Wikipedia terms the "didactic cinquain"--I remember the -ing line in the middle.

... But I think there'd be a way of avoiding something quite that formulaic, maybe especially if you had examples.
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[personal profile] asakiyume 2019-02-02 03:44 pm (UTC)(link)
I like "the lines get longer and longer and then *pop*" very much--I think kids could have fun with that.