30/30 poem day 8

Number 8

Repeat Yourself: Using Anaphora

Sometimes it’s a good thing to repeat yourself. Just look at all of these famous examples of anaphora. Hey, if it’s good enough for Shakespeare, Whitman, Dickens, and Blake, it’s good enough for you.

Anaphora is a device where a word or series of words is repeated at the beginnings of lines or phrases to create emphasis. (One of my favorite poems with anaphora is Miracles by Walt Whitman.)

If you clicked the first link above, you noticed that anaphora is not only used at the beginnings of lines of poetry, but also in prose. So your job today is to use a repeated phrase in a new poem draft

the poem



Would it all be the same

without the graphite lines on the wall

pencil lines on

faded wallpaper

time measured in inches

measured in scars

maybe it was the sign we were born under

or the alignment of the stars

or the way the light reflected on the faded roses

stained from the leaky roof

maybe it was the will of God

or the singing of some off key angels

how does one interpret a lifetime

maybe by the clapping of hands

or pebbles skipped across a raging sea

or the stories held in the things he held dear

the people who still remember

Damn graphite reminders of broken arms

do you remember?

does anybody?

Maybe you had to be there

or is it locked in the fabric, sealed in the walls

or is it really gone like a birthday flame

I swear it was yesterday when I

started

quit

caught my kid

smoking that cigarette

it's hard to read this wallpaper

it holds the tales of my lives

recriminations and weeping confessions

maybe it only matters to me

or it means a little bit more than everything

or it's just dirty roses and pencil marks on stained wallpaper

in a room that memories don't live in any more