Repeat After Me: Patterns of Poetic Repetition
Humans have been wielding double-edged swords for hundreds of years—literally, humans have been using bladed weapons with sharp edges on both sides since the Middle Ages. In the figurative sense, “double-edged” refers to a tool that can both help and harm the user; the phrase has been around in the English language for just as long as the object.
Fittingly, repetition—the act of doing, making, or saying something more than once—is exactly such a tool for a poet. Use repetition with skill and purpose, and you elevate your poem; use it too carelessly or without purpose, and your poem becomes repetitive and dull. Repetition can cut both ways in a poem.
While it’s hard to pin down exactly where the fine line is drawn, examining specific patterns of repetition can help us to see specific ways that we can use repetition to enliven and enhance our poem.
Here are four particular forms of repetition. As you read, consider how these patterns work with repetition to emphasize meaning and add structure.
1) Anaphora
Anaphora, the repetition of the beginning of a line or phrase, can serve a poem in a lot of interesting ways: it adds structure or emphasis. It can even unify seeminAnaphoragly disparate elements.
An example that is often used to illustrate anaphora is the iconic “I Have a Dream” speech delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963. I bolded the instances of anaphora.
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”
“Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of California.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.”
Consider how anaphora works in King’s speech to emphasize his message—and how its impact would change had King avoided repetition. In fact, King’s use of anaphora helps to underline the powerful ideas in his speech that make it so impactful. Because of the way King uses anaphora, a listener (or reader) can pick up on the anaphoric patterns and remember it long after the first experience of hearing or reading it.
We can also see anaphora at work (and referenced in the poem’s title) in Kimiko Hahn’s poem, “Anaphora Using Wilfred Owen’s Line “If you could hear, at every jolt”.” Hahn makes the poetic technique of anaphora visible by explicitly including it in the title of the poem; she also provides the repeated line she will use in her poem in that title. “If you could hear at every jolt” refers to a line in the poem in Latin, Dulce Et Decorum Est (which translates to "it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country").
Owen’s poem, which was written in World War I, critiques the patriotic notion that it is heroic and even glamorous to die in war; instead, in graphic detail, Owen underscores the senselessness of dying in a war. Both the subject matter and Hahn’s choice to highlight the technique of anaphora so boldly, point to the very repetitive nature of war itself.
As its title promises, each line in the poem begins with “If you could hear…” Only two lines do not follow this pattern. In the third from the last stanza Hahn writes, “If you could stand—” Here, Hahn deviates from the pattern of “If you could hear…” After 8 lines that follow the same pattern, the change to the word “stand” really lands in a different way. As a reader, this break with anaphora creates a pause or silence.
The next line picks the “If you could hear” pattern back up before breaking it again in the last line, “You’d hear the earth sounding war—” Breaking the pattern of anaphora with these two lines, brings these lines to the attention of the reader. The difference creates a sonic turn in the poem, an emphasis on their importance to understanding of the poem.
Here are a few more poems that use the repetitive technique of anaphora:
Jenny Johnson, Summoning the Body That Is Mine When I Shut My Eyes
Louise Glück, October (section I)
Stephanie Gray, If you look closely enough at a word, you’ll find it contains its opposite*
As you read each of them, think about how these poets use anaphora to emphasize and build structure.
Anaphora Prompt
Using Kimiko Hahn’s poem as a model, choose one line from a poem you admire. Write 10 lines all beginning with your chosen line or part of the line. Then rewrite one of the lines by omitting the repeated words.
2) Epistrophe
Epistrophe, anaphora’s opposite, is the repetition of the ending of a line or phrase.
A well-known example of epistrophe is the Gettysburg address, delivered by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Notice how the repeated phrase “by the people” creates a musical quality that calls attention to the importance of this part of the speech. Lincoln says, “a government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
A more contemporary example of epistrophe is Beyoncé's song, “Single Ladies.” Epistrophe is central to the song (and what makes it so catchy as a successful pop song). In the first stanza, the phrase “put a ring on it” appears at the end of three of the four lines:
If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it
Don't be mad once you see that he want it
If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it
We can also find epistrophe at work as a poetic technique in established poetic forms like ghazal, sestina, and even some variations of villanelles (when the poet modifies the repeated line throughout the poem) make use of repetition at the end of the line in distinct ways.
Here are a few examples of these forms:
Agha Shahid Ali, “Tonight”
Patricia Smith, “Hip Hop Ghazal”
Tim Siebles, “All the Time Blues Villanelle”
Kimiko Hahn, “Villanelle with a Line Borrowed from Bishop” (Note: a repeat from the previous discussion of anaphora)
Elizabeth Bishop, “Sestina”
Patricia Smith, “Hip Hop Ghazal”
Notice how the repetitions at the end of the lines work to create pacing and evoke emotion in different ways in each of these three forms
Epistrophe Prompt
Using one of these prepositional phrases, write a 10-line poem in which all of the lines end with that phrase. Then pick another phrase from the list that begins with the same preposition and insert two lines that use that alternative. So, if your original phrase was “in the water,” you could use “in flames” to write the two lines.
3) Anadiplosis
Anadiplosis happens when a word or phrase at the end of a line repeats at the beginning of the next line or phrase.
A simple example of of anadiplosis can be found in this quote from Star Wars, when legendary Jedi Master Yoda says,
Fear is the path to the Dark Side.
Fear leads to anger.
Anger leads to hate.
Hate leads to suffering.
Here Yoda demonstrates one important effect of anadiplosis: to show a cause and effect relationship. The use of this repetition makes it clear that suffering can be traced back to hate, which, in turn, can be traced back to anger and ultimately fear. Anadiplosis makes these connections clear for the reader (or listener).
The well-known lullaby, “Hush, Little Baby,” is another great illustration of anadiplosis at work:
Hush little baby, don’t say a word.
Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.
And if that mockingbird won’t sing,
Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.
And if that diamond ring don’t shine…
In this simple song, end lines do not exactly repeat at the beginning of the next line like they do in Yoda’s quote, but the example still functions as anadiplosis because the repeated word is still the first significant word in the next line of the song. Consider how this type of repetition works to create a chain of meaning in the song, how each new line hinges on the one before it in a direct way, unifying the meanings along the way.
The poem, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by Anglo-Irish poet William Butler Yeats has a clear example of Anadiplosis in the second stanza of the poem:
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings
Notice how the anadiplosis works in the poem to slow down the pacing and provide emphasis to the repeated words.
Anadiplosis Prompt
Start by completing one of these phrases:
Because (of)..
Since..
Due to the fact…
Once you have a line, begin to chain it to more lines:
Because my mother said, “Don’t talk”
I did not talk. Because I did not talk
I was…
4) Antanaclasis
Antanaclasis is the repetition of a word or phrase where the repeated word or phrase has an alternate meaning is another technique of poetic repetition.
There is a very clear example of antanaclasis in the phrase,
Time flies like an arrow,
fruit flies like a banana.
These two lines are a clear illustration of how antanaclasis works. In this example, the repeated phrase, “flies like,” is being used very differently in each of the lines. In the first line, “Time flies like an arrow,” flies is a verb, meaning “to move through the air using wings” and like is a preposition, meaning “the same as” or “similar to.”
In the second line, “Fruit flies like a banana,” flies is a noun referring to “a type of winged insect” and like is a verb that means “to find agreeable, enjoyable, or satisfactory.”
So, even though the two words, “flies like,” are identical in both phrases, they have vastly different meanings. The play with these different meanings is what makes the short phrase so compelling.
In Shakespeare’s Othello, antanaclasis appears when Othello comes into Desdemona’s bedroom because he intends to kill her. He says:
Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.
Put out the light, and then put out the light.
Othello uses the word light twice and each time means something completely different. The first light is literal, meaning lamp or other light-producing thing, such as a candle, while the second light refers to Desdemona’s life.
An example of antanaclasis in a contemporary poem is “Sestina: Like” by A.E Stallings. In this poem, as in the example of “flies like” above, Stallings uses the word “like,” as all six of the repeating words in the sestina form. Notice how the poem incorporates so many of the different meanings of the word into one coherent poem. Here is the poem’s third stanza:
But it’s unlikely Like does diddly. Like
Just twiddles its unopposing thumbs-ups, like-
Wise props up scarecrow silences. “I’m like,
So OVER him,” I overhear. “But, like,
He doesn’t get it. Like, you know? He’s like
It’s all OK. Like I don’t even LIKE
Notice how in this stanza, Stallings uses “like” in so many different ways—unlikely (not probable), Like (noun referring to a thumbs-up on social media), and LIKE (a verb referring to the action of liking something or someone).
Antanaclasis Prompts
1. Experiment writing a few lines with some words that have many different meanings but are spelled the same (in technical terms, homographs). Here are a few to get you started:
Run has over 600 different meanings in an unabridged dictionary.
Turn has more than 400 meanings
Stand has close to 300 meanings
2. Pick a set of homophones (words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings). Even though these words appear differently on the page, they sound the same, so using them still creates a sonic type of antanaclasis.
As a poet, you have probably already used some of these repetitive patterns in your poems. Anaphora, epistrophe, anadiplosis, and antanaclasis all play with language in different ways, but what each of these repetitive patterns has in common is that they use the force of repetition for structure and emphasis.
As a consummate word nerd myself, I love considering these nuanced relationships between word sounds and word meanings. I find so much possibility to play opens in the world of my poems when I use repetition in meaningful ways.
This article was published on November 5, 2024. Written by:
