Formal Friday: Repetition!

Repeating words and lines can be a great idea. It makes the poem more like a song, which also means it's more likely to get stuck in people's heads.

It usually works best with a poem that's evoking a mood, and/or expressing a strong emotion. I think when we feel something strongly, our thought patterns are kind of repetitive anyway ("oh crap oh crap oh crap," "OMG OMG OMG squee!"), so maybe that's why it works so well.

Most of the time, it's a good idea to use repetition more or less consistently throughout the poem. Most people like consistent patterns, the same way they like organized closets (whether they have the energy to organize them or not). But I've read some good poems that just have a little bit of repetition right at the end.

Here's a good example of a poem by Donald Justice that uses this device in not all, but most, of the couplets. (I met Donald Justice once. As an undergraduate I booked speakers for this lecture series at our college, and I also introduced them all. I was always a little drunk when I introduced them and probably did a terrible job. But anyway, he was really nice.)

Psalm and Lament


In memory of my mother (1879-1974)
Hialeah, Florida


The clocks are sorry, the clocks are very sad.
One stops, one goes on striking the wrong hours.


And the grass burns terribly in the sun,
The grass turns yellow secretly at the roots.


Now suddenly the yard chairs look empty, the sky looks empty,
The sky looks vast and empty.


Out on Red Road the traffic continues; everything continues.
Nor does memory sleep; it goes on.


Out spring the butterflies of recollection,
And I think that for the first time I understand


The beautiful ordinary light of this patio
And even perhaps the dark rich earth of a heart.


(The bedclothes, they say, had been pulled down.
I will not describe it. I do not want to describe it.


No, but the sheets were drenched and twisted.
They were the very handkerchiefs of grief.)


Let summer come now with its schoolboy trumpets and fountains.
But the years are gone, the years are finally over.


And there is only
This long desolation of flower-bordered sidewalks


That runs to the corner, turns, and goes on,
That disappears and goes on


Into the black oblivion of a neighborhood and a world
Without billboards of yesterdays.


Sometimes a sad moon comes and waters the roof tiles.
But the years are gone. There are no more years.

A couple of other fantastic examples: Federico Garcia Lorca's "Romance Sonambulo" and Paul Celan's "Death Fugue." Fair warning: the second one is pretty rough going (not that the Justice poem was such rollicking fun), but brilliant.