Finding Other Countries

Alan Hilfiker's cinquain style could be called modern pastoral elegy in lightening flashes. He leverages the style of the cinquain, a 5-line poetic form similar to haiku/tanka, to bring poignancy and punch to the pastoral. His collection is capped with an essay on the cinquain poetic form and its inventor Adelaide Crapsey, a fellow Rochester, New York native. Here is the fruit of a life-long exploration of a lesser-known poetic style lovingly adhered to and revived.