EP Johnson Quintet

[Tinker]

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American Verse

The EP Johnson Quintet was Lawrence Eberhart's at Poet's Collective documentation of the stanzaic form from Lost Lagoon by Canadian Native American poet Emily Pauline Johnson (1861=1913). It sparked his attention because of the unusual rhyme scheme. The elements of the EP Johnson Quintet are:

1. stanzaic, written in any number of quintets (5 line stanzas)
2. syllabic, syllables per line 8-9-9-9-8  (patterned after the first stanza of Ms. Johnson's poem.)
3. rhymed, a¹bbba² a¹ccca² a¹ddda²  etc
4. the last 1 or 2 words of L1 and L5 in the first stanza are repeated as the last 1 or 2 words of L1 and L5 of each subsequent stanza.
    

   Lost Lagoon by Emily Pauline Johnson It is dusk on the Lost Lagoon, And we two dreaming the dusk away, Beneath the drift of a twilight grey, Beneath the drowse of an ending day, And the curve of a golden moon. It is dark in the Lost Lagoon, And gone are the depths of haunting blue, The grouping gulls, and the old canoe, The singing firs, and the dusk and--you, And gone is the golden moon. O! lure of the Lost Lagoon,-- I dream to-night that my paddle blurs The purple shade where the seaweed stirs, I hear the call of the singing firs In the hush of the golden moon.

   You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down                       ~~ by Judi Van Gorder.