Poems with Repetition
Repetition is the deliberate reuse of words, phrases, lines, or structures within a poem to create emphasis, rhythm, and emotional intensity.
Repetition in poetry works like a heartbeat — it creates the pulse that drives the poem forward. When a word or phrase recurs, it accumulates meaning with each appearance, gaining weight and resonance. Think of how a refrain in a song burrows into your consciousness, or how a repeated phrase in a speech builds to a crescendo. Poets use repetition to create incantatory rhythms, to insist on a point, to mirror the obsessive quality of certain emotions, or to show how meaning shifts when context changes. The same words, returning in a new stanza, can feel entirely different.
Examples of Repetition
- 1Do not go gentle into that good night (Dylan Thomas — repeated refrain)
- 2I, too, sing America (Hughes — repetition of 'I' for emphasis)
- 3Because I could not stop for Death — He kindly stopped for me (Dickinson — rhythmic repetition)
Poems Using Repetition
What the Body Remembers
My hands still set the table for two. Not every night—just Thursdays, when my hands forget
The House at the End of Sleep
Every night I visit a house I have never lived in but my hands know where the light switch is.
Enough Light
Even now, when nothing seems to hold, Nothing keeps the dark from pressing close— Dawn is just a rumor, barely told,