Repetition is insistence: One time is not enough to achieve the
effect the poet desires. What is beguiling about repetition is how
many varieties such a straightforward action comes in. For in-
stance, repetition may use whole stanzas, thereby drumming a
refrain into the reader's or listener's mind. It may simply insist
on a word and say it over and over. It may create a chant-like ef-
fect as the initial word or group of words in a line is repeated
while the other words in the lines change. More subtly, repeti-
tion can be varied so that words appear and reappear in different
combinations. Repetition mesmerizes; the challenge to the poet
is to use it so it engages rather than dulls, entices rather than re-
states the obvious.

We repeat words for many reasons. Perhaps the simplest is sheer
emphasis: "I want it, I want it, I want it" means that the person really
wants it. Such emphasis speaks to how important something is to
someone; it registers an emotional pulse. It is meant to compel by get-
ting attention. The degree of repetition can move a statement from
something unremarkable to something mesmerizing. The refrains
that many ballads and blues feature have this mesmerizing quality.
After each of the nineteen stanzas of "Greensleeves," a well-known
ballad from the mid-sixteenth century, there is a refrain:

Greensleeves was all my joy,
Greensleeves was my delight;

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