Forms that Make Use of Repetition

En Francais

Repetition in poetry includes a word, phrase or line repeated verbatim. It can be a refrain that appears throughout a poem, either identical to how it first appeared or with slight changes, or it can be sounds, as in end-line and mid-line rhyme.

The three forms I’m going to introduce in this essay are the sestina, where words are repeated in a complex altering order; the pantoum, where whole lines are repeated; and the fugue, which makes use of refrain.

Sestina

The sestina is a poem of 39 lines. The poet selects six words which are rotated in a pattern as shown below, with an envoy or seventh stanza, which has three lines with two of the words in each line:

1st stanza: 123456
2nd: 615243
3rd: 364125
4th: 532614
5th: 451362
6th: 246531
envoy: 25/43/61

Here are the first two stanzas of Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove, 
reading the jokes from the almanac, 
laughing and talking to hide her tears. 

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac, 
but only known to a grandmother. 
The iron kettle sings on the stove. 
She cuts some bread and says to the child, 

and the envoy:

Time to plant tears,  says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove.
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

Writing Exercise 1: Quatrain
Before diving into the sestina, have your students warm up by writing a quatrain, a four line poem of about 8-10 syllables. Like the sestina, the quatrain uses some repetition of sounds (rhyme) or words.
Writing Exercise 2: Sestina
Remind students to select uncomplicated words or a few words that have homonyms for their first sestina. Have them write the words down the right side of the page in the pattern shown above, so they are constantly writing to something. Telling a story or describing an event can be a good way to get into a sestina without getting lost. Remember that with the repetition, there is a weaving forward and backwards. Any narrative requires some flexibility – so not getting tied to the ‘truth’ of the ‘story’ can also help. If you do get tied to the story, then it can be frustrating. This is a good one to start in class, and then give students time at home to work and rework it.

Pantoum

Repetition in a poem means that there is a moving forward and a moving backward. In the sestina only words are repeated.In the pantoum, entire lines are. Traditionally the pantoum was a poem of four or more quatrains written in iambic pentameter with an abab rhyme scheme. Many contemporary poets write in a loose meter but rely on the repetition and drop the rhyme scheme. The pattern in a five stanza pantoum is as follows:

1st stanza: 1-2-3-4
2nd: 2-5-4-6 ( so lines 2 and 4 are repeated, lines 5 and 6 are new lines)
3rd: 5-7-6-8
4th: 7-9-8-10
5th: 9-3-10-1 (so you end with the same line you began with)

Here is an example by Lorna Crozier. She sticks to the rhyme-scheme and has five stresses per line.

The Dirty Thirties 
Grandmother hoed her garden black and blue,
the sun shone without giving any light.
Fennel, basil, heartsease and rue,
she seeded snow to heal a season’s blight.

The sun shone without giving any light
and cows pulled their calves back to the womb.
No snow could heal the years’ sad blight.
A boy played the bones in the upstairs room.

The cow pulled the calf inside the womb.
No milk from a stone, the old woman said.
My dad played the bones in his attic room
where mice ran on wires about his head.

No blood from a stone, the old woman said.
Or snow from snow, or sorrow from a pin.
Mice chewed the wires about their heads
and all things seemed grey and poorer then.

No snow from snow or sorrow from a pin.
Fennel from basil, heatsease from common rue.
All things seemed older and harder then
when Grandma beat her garden black and blue.

Writing Exercise 3: The Pantoum
Students can write as many quatrains as they wish, but I think a 4-5 stanza pantoum is long enough. It allows for the repetition to gain some momentum but doesn’t go on too long. Have students write the pattern down the right margin. As soon as they’ve written the first stanza, have them write lines 2 and 4 in the next and write the new lines around it and continue from there.

Fugue

The next form we are going to look at is the fugue. Here is The Children are Laughing by Gwendolyn MacEwan

It is Monday and the children are laughing
The children are laughing; they believe they are princes
They wear no shoes; they believe they are princes
And their filthy kingdom heaves up behind them

The filthy city heaves up behind them
They are older than I am, their feet are shoeless
They have lived a thousand years; the children are laughing
The children are laughing and their death is upon them

I have cried in the city (the children are laughing) 
I have worn many colours (the children are laughing)
They are older than I am, their death is upon them
I will wear no shoes when the princes are dying

“In music a fugue is a polyphonic (for multi-voiced) composition rich in counterpoint.  Originating in choral music, it usually involved three or four voices” (In Fine Form, pg 68).  In Poetry the fugue is adapted through variation and repetition as you can see in the above poem.  Themes are introduced in lines or line-segments that are later repeated.  The use of repetition adds a sense of urgency.    

As far as the form goes, the fugue is fairly open.  The main requirement is that there are two or more themes, each contained in a line or phrase that is introduced early in the poem and repeated throughout.  

Writing Exercise 4: Imitation

The givenness, the extruded feast-likeness of 
the bend of poplars, which is a kind of weeping. 

(from “This” by Tim Lilburn, Kill-site)

Have students imitate the order of words and the pattern of the lines in the poem above, but using their own words and images. They could mimic parts of the lines like “which is a kind of…” to write their own three to six line poem.

Writing Exercise 5: The Fugue
In this exercise, have students write a poem where a phrase or part of one is repeated throughout (there can be some variation). The phrase should be recognizable, but can be different, so that each time it is heard there is a building of tension in addition to a sense of familiarity. The repeated phrase should be at near-regular intervals to show purpose or method and be a part of the poem’s rhythm. At the end there should be a surprise in how the phrase is used to release the tension built or turn the screw on it slightly.

Recommended Reading
Death Fugue by Paul Celan appears in Paul Celan: Selections, ed by Pierre Joris, University of California Press: Berkley, CA, 2005 (it’s a poem)
Kate Braid and Sandy Shreve, Ed. In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry, Polestar: Vancouver, 2005.
Mark Strand and Evan Boland, The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, W.W. Norton, New York, 2000.

Yvonne Blomer's poetry has won awards and been published internationally in such journals as Seam, The Rialto, Grain and The Antigonish Review in addition to being in The Best of Canadian Poetry in English published by Tightrope Books and in Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poetry published by Mother Tongue Publishing Ltd. Yvonne gained an MA in Poetry from The University of East Anglia in 2006. Her first book, a broken mirror, fallen leaf was short listed for The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.