Repetition of Words and Refrains

Repetition of lines and phrases is a common aspect of oral tradition, as will be seen in examples below. Later written forms also repeat lines for a hypnotic, deeply musical effect. John Ashbery, a 20th-century American poet known for his poems that seem to keep from explaining themselves or coming to a decisive ending, uses the circular form of the pantoum, from Malay folk poetry, to express confusion. The repeated lines are in boldface type.

Now, silently, as one mounts a stair we emerge into the open
but it is shrouded, veiled: we must have made some ghastly error.
To end the standoff that history long ago began
Must we thrust ever onward, into perversity?

But it is shrouded, veiled: we must have made some ghastly error.
You mop your forehead with a rose, recommending its thorns.
Must we thrust ever onward, into perversity?

(“Hotel Lautréamont,” 1992)



In “One Art,” American poet Elizabeth Bishop varies the French Renaissance villanelle form by estabalishing lines in her opening stanza that will be repeated later in the poem.

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
So many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.




As the poem goes on, her claim that loss does not matter takes on an air of desperate–and unconvincing–insistence:

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.




As the speaker repeats the earlier lines they lose their authority.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster
places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel.
None of these will bring disaster.

(“One Art,” 1976)



In the 15th century French poet François Villon used repetition to a similarly bitter effect. Writing in strict 14th-century ballade form (not to be confused with the English ballad), of which he was a master, he offers a string of self-contradicting statements—

There's no care except hunger
No favors but from an enemy
Nothing edible but a bale of hay . . .





—ending with a claim for the cool-headedness of lovers, a group famous for irrationality. This final line repeats in five successive stanzas, reinforcing its irony:

. . . No safety but among the frightened
No good faith but a disbeliever's
Nor any cool heads but lovers

(“Ballade,” 15th century; trans. Galway Kinnell, 1977)