Repetition–of sounds, words, syntax, images–is often the emotional powerhouse of a poem. That is, it is the force that gives the poem a sense of emotional movement. As Laux and Addonizio point out, repetition has power. It is used in “chants and spells, prayers and invocations’ as the most powerful way to commune with a deity; politicians often use repetition in their speeches to stir the emotions of an audience and/or rouse them to action. Poems use repetition in similar ways to similar effects. There are three primary ways we connect sounds with each other in poems:
- Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds within words (e.g. “bones, Oath’)
- Consonance: the close repetition of consonant sounds within words (e.g. “relevant yet wildly irreverent’)
- Alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words or syllables (e.g. “lewd Lorelei’)
Consider also the power of anaphora, which Danez Smith and Joy Harjo both use in their poems in Packet #2. As defined in the textbook, anaphora is “the repetition of a word or group of words at the beginnings of lines.’ For reference, the most famous use of anaphora of the modern era is still Martin Luther King’s 1963 speech at the March on Washington:
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
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 one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
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.
Anaphora is often a driver of emotional momentum. Note the ways Smith and Harjo employ anaphora in their poems, and to what effect. For example, in Harjo’s poem, the anaphora is chant-like, a drumbeat, a heartbeat.
But it is also important to note that repetition doesn’t always generate emotion in poems. For instance, Laux and Addonizio name Gertrude Stein as “the great literary repeater’ of the modernist era; repetition for her was subversion of linguistic expectations, a way to avoid the lyric emotionalism of poetic tradition. Here is an excerpt of the poem they briefly reference in the chapter you read, “Sacred Emily’:
Thimble of everything.
Cunning clover thimble.
Cunning of everything.
Cunning of thimble.
Cunning cunning.
Place in pets.
Night town.
Night town a glass.
Color mahogany.
Color mahogany center.
Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
As you can see, Stein’s repetition is more mechanical than emotional, which some find intellectually interesting and others find tedious and monotonous. But even if you personally dislike Stein’s mode of repetition, using sound intuitively and associatively in our work can lead us to images and ideas we hadn’t thought possible, and add complexity and dimension to our poetry. Intuitive use of sound may even change the course of a poem entirely, so that we feel our way toward a meaning without forcing it into form. In that way, the sounds of language itself can guide us through our poems when we’re stuck or hung up on our “meaning’ or “sense’–when we can’t quite seem to get it “right’ and are trying to will the poem into being what it perhaps does not want to be–by providing another path to follow, another kind of engine to drive our poem or our work in general.
As you write your own poems, consider (sometimes) allowing sound and repetition to be the engine-powers of your poem–or at least the first draft of your poem–instead of sense, argument, or narrative. Listen to the language, and allow it to lead you into imaginative territory. Take pleasure in the way sound can be a maker of meaning in and of itself, but also in all the ways it resists denotative (the literal meaning of the word) understanding, and what value there is to be found in a moment of Steinian “non-sense.”
Please write your reading response on one of the poems from Packet #2, focusing on how the poem’s use of sound or repetition influenced your experience of reading it.
Jewel Blanchard
For this week’s reading response on poem packet 2, I will reflect on the poem, Pulling the Moon by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo. This poem, Pulling the Moon, has a lot of anaphora. The anaphora in this poem gives the poem a rhythm. And with each stanza he adds on to the same anaphora. What I mean is with each anaphora stanza he creates a longer sentence. With having repetition of the same words at the beginning of each stanza is already powerful but then adding on to the same anaphora each line just creates an even more powerful poem in my opinion.
For an example from the poem;
I’ve never.
I’ve never made love.
I’ve never made love to a man before.
I’ve never made love to a man but I imagine.
This is an example of what I was referring to earlier. Adding on to the same anaphora each stanza. I also like how the next anaphora is what the author ended the last anaphora with. So for this one, the next anaphora is “I Imagine”. I just found this poem’s structure to be very powerful. Marcelo Hernandez Castillo does a great job of constructing a meaningful poem with beginning each line with the same words.
Miranda Reynolds
I am going to respond to Castillo’s “Pulling the Moon.” I was particularly intrigued by the use of anaphora in this poem. Each line built onto the previous one in slightly different ways so that, while it was obvious that every line repeated something, either a word or a phrase, these repetitions felt twisted and more subtle. Paired with the wavy structure of the stanzas themselves, the anaphora suggested a frazzled and confused tone from the narrator who was struggling to understand a concept with no previous experience.
This repetition of select words throughout a couple lines at a time also served to create more of a connected relationship between the different thoughts. The reader was being shown how the narrator’s thought process was subtly enlightened every line with new words coming into play but also a solid theme of exploration that stuck in the poem throughout, a bit like how a scrabble game keeps adding new thoughts, but they are still all connected to the word that came before them in differing magnitudes.
Additionally, because each line played off the one before in a different surprising way, it felt like the narrator was possibly having some sort of conversation with the other unnamed entity. Each line was generated from new information that the narrator received and then reiterated by adding a couple new syllables to the next line; however, the reader was not aware of anything that the other figure was contributing and so received it all from the narrator, which added to the frazzled and confused feel that the poem never fully resolved.
Nadia Finley
Vievee Frances’ “Guns of Wishes” plays on repetend. The way gun is written over and over throughout the piece tears down the wall of perceived understanding around guns. Gun–gun gun, “gun of a gun,” “guns a-go-go.” It feels like Frances is trying to reinvent what the meaning of the word is, like she is trying to make her gun of wishes become one with the gun of reality. Reading the repetition in “Guns of Wishes” reminds me of when I speak one word (or a short phrase) over and over until the sound of the word (or phrase) loses its meaning. The repeated word takes on a strange form foreign to my original understanding of the word despite its holding the same form in sound and syllable. Similarly, Frances’ repetitive poem takes “gun” and plays with its meaning, morphing the reader’s perception of what they might originally imagine when they read “gun.” We are brought to a familiar word, a familiar situation, and them twisted away from what would normally happen in such a situation. We are faced with a hot word and made to read it, internalize it, kick it around, and pick it up to find a new understanding, a hopeful understanding, Frances’ image of a gun framed in the desire for peace in place of blasted brains.
Sarah Corbett
I’m going to respond to ‘the 17 year old and the gay bar’. I’m not very familiar poetry, and sometimes it’s hard for me to feel the intended rhythm when I’m reading them. There was something about this one though, I felt that I could feel the narrators inebriation, while also feeling the beat of club music. Nothing was capitalized, and some of the wording was slightly confusing, which is what felt like the inebriation of the narrator. Then, there was the abrupt commas and line breaks, which made it feel as though these snippets of sentences were the thoughts between thumping beats of music. I think that these two things really painted an emotional picture of exploring sexuality and the adult world, and it was surprisingly powerful. It was definitely my favorite out of this poetry packet.
Adeline Knavel
For this week’s reading response regarding poetry packet #2 I will be doing my reflection and reading the response to Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s poem “Pulling the Moon”. I think what had drawn me into this poem was the use of anaphora. Marcelo Hernandez Castillo uses a lot of anaphora in his poem. Each line in the poem was somewhat repeated or written on top of the previous line. It was written in a way that each line had a repeated word or phrase, this repetition made the entire poem and writing longer and had a rhythm to it. I thought the use of anaphora and the build-up of this poem was beautiful, I think the use of repetition in some words and phrases made the poem have a bit of a rhythm to it. For example, this part of his poem below has repetition and the anaphora seems to have rhythm in my opinion.
I’ve never
I’ve never made love.
I’ve never made love to a man.
Each line there is something from the previous line being built on to it. I think because Marcelo Hernandez Castillo chose to write “Pulling the Moon” this way with all the repetition made the poem seem like he was speaking out loud or talking to someone. I liked how each line he added more to the poem and was writing on top of the previous line. Overall I think Marcelo Hernandez Castillo wrote a beautiful powerful poem.
Christy Barrett
My reading response this week is for She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo. What I noticed first in this poem was the repetitions. These repetitions felt emotional to me. Each time I read “she had horses…”, it felt like the emotion was intensified. As a teenager, i wrote a lot of poetry, and many of my poems were emotional intensified using repetitions as well. This also seems like a way to make this piece more fluid. Instead of describing the horses alone, she adds this line to make the work flow, in my opinion. I feel this piece would have been much more dull without this technique. She uses descriptions of the horses that are simplistic in nature. For example: “…with full, brown thighs”. But she also uses some beautiful figurative language here, such as “She had horses who danced in their mothers’ arms” and “She had horses who thought they were the sun and their bodies shone and burned like stars”. I love those fierce descriptors like “shone”; she also used “She had horses who cried int heir beers”, and this was my favorite line because as she goes on, she makes them more humanized. She even refers to them as liars at one point. I love this because you can feel that there is such a raw connection to these animals, that they seem like people to her… capable of human emotion and betrayal. This was lovely and unexpected, and i love that about poetry. I’m not a horse person, but I felt this. Great piece!
Johnny Bishop
The one that caught my eye the most was Explosion. I think what stood out the most was that the repetition of the poem made it more intense and inviting to read. I already have a love for horses so for the fact that horses were included at the end made it more appealing to me. The sound that the writer uses made it real like it was happening right now at the moment that I was reading it. The repetition gave it a certain vibe that I can relate to in life and for me that isn’t easy to do since I’m not very big on poetry.
Curtis Wolfe
For this weeks reading response, I will be reflecting on “Pulling of the Moon” by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo from packet #2. Out of all the poems in that packet, I personally felt like Castillos poem was easier to read. I didn’t feel like the use of “I’ve never” was over used like some of the other poems and their repetitive words. Although I know the purpose of this section was the use of repetitive words, it just leaves me not wanting to read them. The use of going from “I’ve never” to “I imagine” to “My hair” I think was a good touch in the poem, it didn’t feel like they were overplayed.
Ainsley Smith
For this week’s reading response, I decided to reflect on the poem, “Pulling the Moon by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo. The biggest thing that drew me in as a reader was the prominent use of anaphora and the disoriented layout of the poem. More and more was built onto each line, giving more depth to the message that entrances the reader.
With anaphora, the beginning phrase is obviously repeated; but I also noticed that at the end of each section line, it lead into the beginning of a new subject; thus starting the new phrase. For example, “I imagine pulling | the moon out of his brow and eating it again. | Pulling his brow in silence. | A king of silence when the moon goes out,” is a great use of anaphora and intertwining the line segments together to create a picture and message.
The use of repetition also made it seem as though each thought or phrase was speaking together, and working together to create this larger meaning. Because of the use of new phrases, it brought forth a new conversation into the poem. It kept me engaged the whole time, wondering how each line segment connected to one another.
Kyleigh McArthur
“Ice Horses” was the poem that stood out to me because of its use of anaphora by starting each line with “These are the” and then added “ones” into the line at some point later. It drew me into the poem allowing me to connect more with the writing style. The poem also had a nice rhythm to it, which is usually hard for me to determine. I struggle getting down the rhythm to most of these poems, and even some of them from the book we are reading, so this was a great feeling to read this and read it correctly. I really liked how each line started the same because to me it felt like it worked really well drawing out the emotion in me as the reader.
Ta'Mariah Jenkins
The poem I decided to analyze was, ” Pulling the Moon. At first, I didn’t like it because it didn’t make sense to me. What was the author’s logic or point of view? What was the purpose of the poem? What does pulling the moon have to do with intimacy? However, I found myself chuckling at the question that had arisen in my head. Where is the love? I guess I had chuckled because I found somewhat of an understanding of the poem than meaning. Why must a poem have logic or makes sense when first reading. What if their metaphoric value to Pulling the Moon that the author had put into it. I had to think deeper and then I came to the realization of how imagery. How each sentence had become more surreal than the next. If I could put it into one word, I would say magical. That the imagery of first-time sex can not be explained through normal reasoning and logic.
I like how the author uses repetition in their poem because it is a thought. The mind tends to wander to different areas of our imagination. A thought can begin from certain triggers and it makes the flow understandable with the concept of I’ve never tended to the notion of never having sex with a man.
Casey Fetterhoff
Regarding “The 17 year old & the gay bar”
Actually, I didn’t feel a lot of “sound” in this poem, it seemed more a description of sights and feelings than sound, so I think repetition is the main focus of this response. I feel that there is repetition of a theme, if not a specific line or word, in that the first half repeats the theme of religion-Sin, Christ, the blood of my new savior, and the second half repeats a theme of living in or building something tangible and physical. I believe that the use of this repetition provides a theme which needs to be actively sought after by the reader. You can read it and take note of the repetition, but could easily skip over it as a simple use of metaphor. Or, you can read it, read it again, and think about it as a way of addressing the battles fought by the protagonist of the poem against religion, and the desire to find a home in who he is, which is probably a new home from the one he came from. Of course, this may be conjecture, but it is the first thing that came to mind upon actually stopping and thinking about it-And I find that first reactions are often the most true.
Devin Byrd
Harjo’s piece is obviously very repetitive, seeing as every lines begins in the exact same way, but I took it as an attempt by the author to hammer home a feeling, one I believe to be either exasperation or resignation. I believe the term “horses” was being used to refer people in her poem, and by describing a wide variety of different people throughout a lifetime with the exact same term, I assume she’s in some way stating that all people are ultimately the same in some way. I think she was using repetition to also reinforce this message. All of her lines are the same at a base level, and so are people.
Gabriel Miller
I think that the gun repetition of in “Gun of Wishes” really helped to solidify either the poem as satire, or to disassociate the implications of a gun in the normal sense. In either case, the idea of a gun is used to make a point. In the interpretation of changing the traditional idea of a gun from a killing tool to a powerful, in this case good, tool the repetition of the word gun helps to break down its meaning while context replaces that meaning. In the more likely case of satire, the use of the word gun is so over the top to point out the irony in wanting guns despite their inability to do anything claimed in the poem, like to bring peace. As a use of anaphora, this shows that instead of drawing emphasis to statements alone, the phrase itself can become the focus. The poem also has strong consonance particularly in the third stanza which helps to emphasis the word gun even more.
Timberly Kneebone
For this week’s reading response on poem packet 2 I am focusing on the poem “Pulling the Moon” by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo. This poem really uses rhythm in order to create a smooth and powerful meaning. I really enjoy that the author used repetition in order to keep building onto the same idea without it becoming too confusing. Each line added something previous one. Each slightly different than the last but just enough the same to show that it was repeating. I felt that with each line added it almost twisted the original idea without completely losing the integrity. Because the beginning of the lines were the same I felt as though the poem was almost seamless and transitioned extremely smoothly when reading it. I overall really loved the author’s use of sound and repetition.
Anna Johnson
Repetition in poems is something that I appreciate. It creates emphasis on what is being told so that the reader doesn’t forget it. In “Pulling the Moon” by Castillo I found myself reading it fairly fast. With his repetition, we learn one thing, then another, and then another all within the same first words. Sometimes dropping the repetition used before to create another word that is repeated. “When the moon goes back and forth between us. A kind of silence that goes back and forth. A kind of silence lit for a second.” There is so much repetition used from all parts of the sentences.
I thought the author’s use of repetition was fun to read. It carried a story that we slowly learned about yet we read it so fast. I think the beginning of it was very catching, not by the content but by the repetition. “I’ve never”. The author goes on to use this over and over to finally get across that they imagine it. The lines are so simple to read overall which made my reading experience enjoyable.