My Virtual Reading Room

Adelaide Crapsey (1878 – 1914) was born and raised in New York. A graduate of Vassar, she taught briefly until tuberculosis left her bedridden and, eventually, claimed her life at the age of thirty-six. Adelaide loved Japanese tanka and haiku and created the American cinquain, which shares some similarities with those forms. Though she was well respected as a poet during her lifetime, most of her work was published after her death. She wrote fewer than a hundred poems in her lifetime.