This week: Repetition in Poetry Edited by: SantaBee  
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“Repetition creates a sense of continuity, of an unbroken pattern such as one may oppose to the extreme discontinuity of death.” – Peter Sacks
Poetry is: Literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. – From Britannica
This newsletter will discuss a technique used in poetry – repetition. Repetition, as in rhyme, is a strong mnemonic device. Mnemonic is basically a memory device. It’s a way to memorize and learn something. For example, simply lullabies or a prayer. This newsletter will give a basic overview of repetition and how it can be used in poetry.
I’m SantaBee and I’m your guest Poetry editor this week.
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Why would you want to use repetition in your poetry? One reason would be for emphasis. Repeating words, phrases or lines draws attention to their importance and reinforces their meaning.
Another reason would be for rhythm which creates a musicality to the poem that can make the poem easy to remember.
Unity is another reason to use repetition. It helps to create a sense of cohesion and unity of themes in a poem.
Repetition makes a poem more memorable to the reader. For example, in High School, in my English class, we studied some of the poems written by Robert Frost and my absolute favorite was “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Why? The line “And miles to go before I sleep Has stuck with me now for over 30 years. The line repeats at the end, really nailing home to me that I have more life to live and the themes of responsibility and appreciation proved anchoring at the time.
Lastly, repetition gives meaning to by layering multiple elements, daring the reader to slow and contemplate just why the line/phrase/word was repeated. See my thoughts on Robert Frost above.
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There are several types of repetition that can be found in poetry. Sound involves the following: alliteration, assonance, consonance.
Consonance is when you repeat a certain consonant sound. For example, a “D” sound: “The dog dug deep in the ground.”
Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds with words that close together without repeating any consonants. For example, “He meets her by the beat of a heart near the weeping willows.”
Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds close together. The most famous one is: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” With alliteration you can go from whimsy to serious depending on your topic.
Repeating a word in a poetry can give unity to the themes you are exploring in the poetry. Sylvia Plath is known to use word repetition in her poetry.
Repeating lines in poetry gives the poem a chorus like effect and helps to cement an idea, concept, or theme. Usually, this type of repetition has a sonic effect which is a strong mnemonic device.
Repeating ideas stress emotions and themes. Dr. Suess is a good example of idea repetition. For example: “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, / Old fish, new fish, this one has a little bit of both.”
If you have an opportunity to play around with repetition in your poetry give it a shot and see what you think. A villanelle is one of my favorite styles of poetry as it uses repeating lines to stress ideas and themes. If you have a villanelle to share, please do and I’ll include it in my next guest newsletter.
Here an example of repetition put to work in a song to stress a theme.
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Feedback from my Poetry Newsletter dated: 13 NOV 2024:
Seabreeze 
Love your selections, love poetry. I discovered the Sestina on day and wrote Savior Our Lord. It was fun to do and game me a better appreciation of other writers creations. Great post!
Monty 
What you write is very true
Would expect no less from you. 
Thank you Seabreeze and Monty
Editor’s Note: If you have a topic you would like to see me cover or write about in the Poetry newsletter write in and let me know!
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Poetry: December 11, 2024 Issue [#12876]
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