Michael Peter Garofalo, in 2021, defined
Four Quintain Sonnet Forms that he used
in his writing: 5252, 554, 555, and 553.
This was an original and unique contribution
to the arts of Quintain Poetry. He invented
these four forms and then wrote over 68
quintain sonnets, many show below.
Volumes 2, 5, 6, and 7 of Bundled Up
have the most quintain sonnets.

My 2026-2027 goal is to publish
200 Quintain Sonnets here at
The Gushen Grove Sonnets:
Volumes 1 and Volume 2

Where is the Gushen Grove?

In a verdant farmland valley
amid field crops and orchards
was a grove of trees. Under
those trees was a fine home
where Karen and Michael lived.

Gushen = Valley Spirit, Spirit of the Valley,
The Mother of Life, The Giver of Life,
The Verdant Valley as the Source of Life,
The Sacred River of the Valley, Life Souce,
Like: Salinas, North Sacramento, Willamette Valleys.

"The Valley Spirit never dies
It is named the Mysterious Female.
And the doorway of the Mysterious Female
Is the base from which Heaven and Earth sprang.
It is there within us all the while.
Draw upon it as you will, it never runs dry."
-  Translated by Arthur Waley, Daodejing, Chapter 6

Gushen Research by Mike Garofalo

Thanks

As always, many thanks to Blanche Karen Eubanks Garofalo,
my wife of 59 years, for all her support, encouragement,
love, work, and great progress and interesting
experiences together.

The Gushen Grove Sonnets, Volume 2
By Mike Garofalo

The inky clouds rushed by...
Carried by summertime southwestern winds.
Storm clouds whooshed to Mount Adams.
     Our fir branches           began to dance
     Up and Down      Back and Forth

Lanky Douglas firs
swaying in the Cascadian Winds---
     August melodies

Hot August sunshine
scent of fir pitch in the air---
     Big firs offer shade

A bare branch breaks off
knocks around as it falls down---
     Crashes on a pot

BU3072, 5333 Style

101.

Close to the Garden Soil

Weeds in the garden---
persistent green intruders,
teaching patience too.

Kneeling in May mud
each weed pulled up and let go---
mind clears with each pull.

A rubber bin holds
what I pulled from the border---
fresh fades to to dry brown.

The wisteria climbs the trellis wall,
the little leaves catch shadows as they crawl;
a tangled maze where chickadees hide,
and silent spiders weave side to side.
Where single thin vines creep up to the sky.

BU4046, 3335 Style

102.

Listening to Change

Dying is a Hard Journey

Dying is such a depressing waste
    a wasting away of dignity
        facing the firing squad of some disease
            your own body murders you with ease
                twenty names for your miseries.

    Can't hide in the woods or city,
Dying spares no home, nor has any pity.

Dying can be over instantly
        in an hour, month, season, or years.
Dying can be around the corner
        or in a house in south Spokane.
Dying ends with an open mouth sigh.
      Dying and Death, the Faces of Janus.
      Dying is Death's Emissary, both liars.

Dying and I shared a final toast;
Before She finally released my ghost.

BU4030

104.

This work is licensed under a:
Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No-Derivates
4.0 International License.

The Gushen Grove Sonnets: Volume 2, Poems 100-200

The Gushen Grove Sonnets: Volume 2, Poems 100-200

The Gushen Grove Sonnets: Volume 2, Poems 100-200

Sonnets

Quintain Sequences of Sonnet Length

i.e., The Four Quintain Sonnet Structural Forms
Studies by Mike Garofalo

5252 quintain + couplet + quintain + couplet
14 lines, stanzas with rhyme schemes or free verse
Examples: # 600, 904, 968, 1217, 2154, 2229, 2384, 2518, 2528, 2521, 2523
        #2526, 2528, 2532, 2534

Mike Garofalo (5252):
Awakening: Wednesday, 2/5/2025, 3:33 am #2528
Chanting Canyon Streams #1217
Dreams of Gertrude Jekyll's Munstead Wood Garden #2518
Duplicate Webpages Not Loading #2521
Empty Beer Cans on the Golf Course #2532
Fourteen Acts I Do Every Day at 8o Years of Age #2523
Golfo de las Américas #2526
Listening to Change #2154
On the Road to Eureka #904
playing gods #600
Poetry: New Under the New
Prior Questions for the Tarot #968
The Pokeweed Sutra #2521
Riddles Unraveled #2384
The Ringing Gong #2530
Speaking of Cars Speaking
Spirit Quest in the Sierras # 2579
Steigerwald Wildlife Refuge #2534
Voyager Tarot Candlight Reading #50

Gushen Grove Sonnets by Michael P. Garofalo

555 quintain + quintain + quintain

15 lines, stanzas with rhyme schemes or free verse

Mike Garofalo Quintain Sonnet Examples 555
Examples: # 92, 932, 933, 939, 1513, 1931, 2006, 2049, 2077, 2099,
# 2131, 2175, 2243, 2254, 2576, 2853, 2925

John Ashbury, A Picture of J. A. in a Prospect of Flowers

Robert Bly:
The Poem
The Chinese Peaks
The Rainy September

Hilda Doolittle (H.D.):
Time has an end you say

William Everson, Jacob and the Angel

Mike Garofalo (555):
Alternatives of Two #2049
Best Way Forward # 2214
The Bloodless Sea #92
The Bottom Line #2175
Criteria for Action #2735
The Day My Religion Started to Die #2340
Double Visions #933
The Event: Number 16; She Was Fire #2788
A False Call to Men # 2506
Feathers in the Weeds #2243
Flotsams of Unknowns #2303
The Hanford Radioactive Blues # 2254
Here & Now @ #2374
Packed Into Anxiety #1968
Playing with the Table Box #2035
The Pleasures of Masochistic Conundrums #932
Quintains At a Minimum #2576
Running Out of Time #1513
Sand in my Face #2926
So What If? #1964
Time Teases # 2969
A Titled Quintain is a Sextet #2077
Bundled Up: Quintain Sonnets: Volume 5
We Spoke Softly # 2589
The West Edge Tour # 2925
Will Cherished Ideals Survive #2229

Philip Larkin:
Compline
Hard Lines
The Returning I
Song With a Spoken Refrain
Success Story
Young Woman's Blues

D. H. Lawrence:
Come Spring, Come Sorrow #2853
Turned Down # 2973

Audre Lorde, Love Poem

Marianne Moore, Feed Me, Also, River God

Howard Nemerov:
Date with the Rabbi
First Snow
To the Mannequins
The Vacuum
The Wheel King #2541

Octavio Paz:
Walking Through the Light #2099

Arthur Rimbaud, The Poor Man Dreams #2209

Christina Rosetti, By the Sea

William Stafford:
Entering History
Fixers
For a Lost Child
Freedom
The Gift
Haycutters
Ice Fishing
Jeremiah at Miminagish
A Life, a Ritual
A Memorial to My Mother
Midwest
My Mother Was a Soldier
No Praise, No Blame
Over the North Jetty
Right to Die
Security
Stereopticon
Vocation
The Wanderer Awaiting Preferment
Watching the Jet Planes Dive
Whispered in Winter
Witness

Diane Wakoski, Belly Dancer

W. B. Yeats:
The Mother of God
Remorse for Intemperate Speech #2710
The Road at My Door
The Rose of the World
The Stare's Nest in My Window

The Gushen Grove Sonnets

Bundled Up: 1,800+ Quintains, by Michael P. Garofalo

553 quintain + quintain + triplet
13 lines, stanzas with rhyme schemes or free verse
Examples: # 2175, 2241, 2596, 2766, 2770

William Ellery Channing, This is to Be My Symphony #3572

Marge Piercy, Postcard from the Garden

Kay Ryan, The Theft

Mike Garofalo:
The Bottom Line # 2175
Seeing What We Want to See # 2766
Unhitched from the Eternal Now # 2770

Anne Waldman, The Asian Notebook

William Stafford: Across Kansas #2596

Quintain Sonnets by Mike Garofalo

Sonnet Form Studies by Mike Garofalo

The Gushen Grove Sonnets

554 quintain + quintain + quartet

14 lines, stanzas with rhyme schemes or free verse

Mike Garofalo Quintain Sonnet 554 Examples:

# 2654, 2663, 2763, 2764, 2765, 2767, 2768, 2769, 2771

Winston Abbott, Blessed Be the Night

Julian Bell:
An Epistle on the Subject Of # 2983

Mike Garofalo:
Dream Time of a Body-Mind # 2768
Five Elements Embracing # 2763
Flowers in the Skagit Valley # 2767
Here and Gone # 2663
Ice Crystal Streaked # 2771
Mountains Melted # 2764
On this Day # 2935
Pointing in What Direction? # 2769
Radiate the Inner Smile #2654
Waiting: Then Suddenly # 2765

Stéphane Mallarmé, Fan #3537

Soil, sea, sun, rain, sky ...
Five Elements embracing,
Intertwined in mind.
Unfathomable Matrix;
Scaffolds on scaffolds

Grounded in Otherness.
Below sky, gardener, bees, soil,
seeds, leaves, stems, roots, water...
Below wet cells embraced,
Below atoms dancing on Energy...

Deeper and deeper below
Into What?
A Plenitude, a sacredness.
Emptiness in full bloom.
- Mike Garofalo, #2763

5333 quintain + haiku + haiku + haiku [14 Lines]

14 Lines, stanzas with rhyme schemes or free verse.
Each haiku must conform to the 575 English syllable
counts for each of the three lines. You can also have
alternative layouts such as 3335, 5333, 3533, 3353.

Mike Garofalo Quintain Sonnet 5333 Examples:
#3072,

Crashes on a Pot

The inky clouds rushed by...
Carried by summertime southwestern winds.
Storm clouds whooshed to Mount Adams.
     Our fir branches           began to dance
     Up and Down      Back and Forth

Lanky Douglas firs
swaying in the Cascadian Winds---
     August melodies

Hot August sunshine
scent of fir pitch in the air---
     Big firs offer shade

A bare branch breaks off
knocks around as it falls down---
     Crashes on a pot

BU3072

Examples of longer poems using
5 line stanzas extensively or
exclusively:

John Ashbery, Voyage in the Blue

W. H. Auden:
The Decoys
Elegy
Marginalia
Oxford
Prologue at Sixty
The Watchers

Ted Berrigan, Words for Love

Christina Bok, Kalokagathia

Elizabeth Bishop:
Cirque d'Hiver
In a Room
North Haven
Sleeping on the Cieling
The Unbeliver

Billy Collins:
Animal Behavior
Sandhill Cranes of Nebraska
(detail)

Randy Crawford:
I Don't Wanna Be Normal #2310

Robert Creely, Self-Portrait

James Dickey: The Heaven of Animals

Emily Dickinson:
571, 1217, 1221, 1223, 1228

Robert Frost:
Bond and Free
In a Vale

Mike Garofalo:

At the Mysterious Pass # 2685
Devil's Lake in Lincoln City #2927b
Drifting to My Mind's Edge #2633
Arbitrary Associations Impending #2536
Bumps in the Logic Road #2760
Crash, Smashed! #2650
Dosewallips on the Fjord #566
The Olympic Curve on Highway 101
One Picture of Me #2620
Pulling Up Onions in April # 2683
Raven Broke Open the Magical Clam
These Dear Friends of the Buddha Mind # 2675
Thou Are Not That # 2679
Time of the Inner Mind #9
Time Travelled to the Outskirts of Words #2783
Vampires in the Hoh Forest #2525
The West Edge Tour # 2925
Winter Rain Returns #1614
Wittgenstein's Remarks #2876

Louise Glück, Threshing

Paul Goodman:
The Weepers Towers in Amsterdam

Noah Eli Gordon, The Book of Forgetting

Robert Hayden:
Mystery Boy looks for kin in Nashville

Richard Hugo:
A Chapel Further West than Most
Changes in Policy at Taholah

Josephine Jacobsen:
How We Learn
Language as an Escape from the Discrete
Monosyllables

Gallway Kinnell:
Alewives Pool
To Christ Our Lord

Robert Lowell, Fall 1961

Thomas McGrath, A Letter for Marian

John Milton, Song on a May Morning

Marianne Moore:
A Carriage from Sweeden
The Plumet Basilisk
In the Days of Prismatic Color

Howard Nemerov:
Elegy of Last Resort #2544
The Scales of the Eyes

Frank O'Hara:
Edwin's Hand
Funnies
Hatred
Hunting Horns
My Heat
One Seeing Larry Rivers
On Rachmaninoff's Birthday
Poem
V. R. Lang

Charles Olson:
Gulf of Maine
Some Good News

Octavio Paz:
Ladera Este, East Slope
A Day in Udaipur

Arthur Rimbaud:
The Savior Bumped Upon His Heavy Butt
Squatting

Theodore Roethke:
Loves Progress
All the Earth, All the Air
It was the beginning winter
Highway: Michigan
The Tranced
The Dying Man

Winfield Townkey Scott:
Five for the Grace of Man

Kim Stafford:
Tove Jansson's Island

Wiliam Stafford:
A Bridge Begins in the Trees
An Introduction to Some Poems
At Our House
At the Un-National Monument
A Family Turn
Father's Voice
Fifteen
For a Lost Child
Freedom
From the Move to California
How These Words Happened
Ice Fishing
Lake Chelan
Midwest
A Memoria: Son Bret
Mother's Day
My Life
Our Kind
Run Before Dawn
Serving with Gideon
A Star in the Hills
Sky
Story Time
Things That Happen
Together Again
Ultimate Problems
Vocation
Your Life
A Walk in the Country
Watching the Jet Planes Dive
The Way I Write
Witness

Trumbull Stickney, At Sainte-Marguerite

Derek Walcott, Forest of Europe

Theodore Weiss, A Dab of Color

Mark Van Doren, Family Pride

Paul Verlaine:
Bournemouth
Nightmare
Sequidilla
Snow in the Midst
A Widower Speaks

I have also searched in many book editions that I own
or from the Clark County Library, and I have found
No Quintains or a few rare Quintains
in the collected poetic works of:
John Ashbury, W. H. Auden, Ted Berrigan, Wendell Berry, Frank Bidart,
Elizabeth Bishop, e. e. cummings, Robert Creely, Billy Collins, Gregory Corso,
Emily Dickinson, William Everson, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg,
Richard Hugo, Michael McClure, W.S. Merwin, Adrienne Rich,
Arthur Rimbaud, Gertrude Stein, Derek Walcott, William Butler Yeats,
Walt Whitman, etc.

Most of the writers listed above were writing in the 20th
Century. Most wrote free verse. Most wrote long poems,
and a few in a short verse style like Emily Dickinson. Many
wrote prose poems. Most favored using quatrains,
couplets, sextexts, octets, one-liners, and mixed length free
verse style poems.

The Quintain is favored by mnay writers of Epigrams and
Moralisms. Many 20th century poets dislike being
too preachy, although social-political-cultural wars
have taken caualities in the poet ranks. Yet, still,
every good writer is hoping to write the perfect
Epigram that will become popular.

And, of course, for a smile... Limericks.

William Stafford uses the quintain form quite
frequently. Louise Gluck frequently uses one
quintain in longer poems. D. H. Lawrence offers
one quintain stanza in many of his poerms.

Michael Peter Garofalo (1946-) grew up in East Los Angeles, raised well by June and Big Mike,was educated in Catholic Schools, lived with two other brothers, graduated (B.A., M.S.) from local universities, married Blanche Karen Eubanks, served in the US Air Force, worked in and managed many City and Los Angeles County Public Libraries, raised two children, socialized, traveled, and learned. Retired as the Regional Administrator, East Region, Los Angeles County Public Library in 1998. We moved to a rural 5 acre property in Red Bluff, in the North Sacramento Valley, CA. Webmaster since 1999. Worked part-time for the Corning Union Elementary School District (Technology and Media Services Manager and District Librarian); and as a yoga, Taijiquan, and fitness club instructor until 2016. Traveled extensively in Northern California, Oregon, and Washington. We both retired, and we moved to Vancouver, WA, in 2017. Currently in 2025: reading, writing, gardening, harmonica playing, home chores, yurt camping, exercise, traveling in the Northwest, web publishing, family events, poetry research, photography, Northwest research, Nature mysticism, Buddhist and Taoist literature, walking, sports events, etc.

Text Art and Concrete Poetry

25 Steps and Beyond; Collected Works

Sonnets: Research, Bibliography, Notes

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Poetry, Quintains, TextArt, Research, Compilation,
Photos, Series, Webpage Creation, Indexing:
By Michael Peter Garofalo
© Green Way Research, Valley Spirit Center,
Gushen Grove Notebooks, Vancouver, Washington
© 2021-2026 CCA 4.0

This work is licensed under a:
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4.0 International License.

This document was last edited, revised,
reformatted, added to, relinked,
changed, improved, or modified
by Michael Peter Garofalo
on July 18, 2026.