Adelaide Crapsey was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1878, but she lived most of her life in Rochester, New York . Her father, Reverend AlgernonSidney Crapsey, was an Episcopalian clergyman. He was transferred to a chirch in Rochester, which was the reason for their move. Adelaide attended public school in Rochester, later being sent to Kemper Hall preparatory school in Kenosha, Wisconsin. She was accepted to Vassar College and graduated in1901. This same year her sister Emily died, which put her teaching career on hold for one year. From 1902-04, she returned to Kemper Hall to teach. After two years of teaching she decided to get back to her studies, but this time in Rome. She studied at the School of Classical Studies of American Academy for one year .
In 1906, she went back to the U.S. to teach at Miss Lowe's School in Stamford, Connecticut. She arrived back just in time for her father's trial for heresy, which led him to be displaced from the clergy. The next year she encountered another close death, the death of her eldest brother Philip. All this stress left her in poor health. She continued to fight her illness through the next few years as she traveled back to Europe hoping that she would recover.
Amidst all this distress, Adelaide Crapsey managed to create a new form of verse, known as the cinquain. It was through her interest in the Japanese haiku and tanka verse form that she got her influence from. During her time in Europe she made contacts about publishing her work, but her illness continued to worsen. She returned to the U.S. for one last time to teach poetry at Smith College. This was when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. When her illness took over her body, she was put into a private nursing home. Her health dramatically worsened when she decided to return to her home in Rochester where she died in October of 1914.
Her work was not published until after her death. Claude Bragdon published her work in a collection known as Verse. Sandburg was of great influence on the remaining existence of the cinquain form because of his poem titled Adelaide Crapsey. They say it was the poem that brought attention to Crapsey and kept her new form of verse alive.
Poets' Corner - Adelaide Crapsey - Selected W...
This site provides a selsction of Crapsey's most famous work.
ADELAIDE CRAPSEY: The Complete Cinquains
This site provides the complete collection of Adelaide Crapsey's cinquains.