The Inquiry of Comprehending is a ribald poetic form concerning someone recently deceased, originating in The Citizen of Confederacy. The rules of the form are applied by poets to produce individual poems which can be recited. The poem is a single quintain. Use of assonance and elision is characteristic of the form. A form of parallelism is common throughout the poem, in that certain lines often contrast underlying meaning. Each line has six syllables.