We have been exploring newer poetry forms of late and we are going to try our hand with another poetry form using a recurring pattern.

Importance of Repetition

As a backgrounder, repetition—the use of the same term several times—is one of the crucial elements in poetry. “Repetition in word and phrase and in idea is the very essence of poetry,” Theodore Roethke writes in “Some Remarks on Rhythm” (1960). It is one of the most marked features of all poetry, oral and written, one of the primary ways we distinguish poetry itself. Repetition, as in rhyme, is a strong mnemonic device. Oral poets especially use it for remembering structures.

The incantatory magic of poetry—think of spells and chants, of children’s rhymes and lullabies—has something to do with recurrence, with things coming back to us in time, sometimes in the same way, sometimes differently. Repetition is the primary way of creating a pattern through rhythm. Meaning accrues through repetition. One of the deep fundamentals of poetry is the recurrence of sounds, syllables, words, phrases, lines, and stanzas.

Many of the sound devices of poetry (alliteration, assonance, consonance) depend on recurrence. Metrical patterns are established by recurrences, and so are poetic forms (villanelle, canzone, the sestina), some with repetends and refrains.

Source

Mirrored Refrain

The Mirrored Refrain is rhyming verse form constructed by Stephanie Repnyek.

The poem is formed by three or more quatrains where two lines within the quatrain are the “mirrored refrain” or alternating refrain.

The rhyme scheme is as follows: xaBA, xbAB, xaBA, xbAB, etc..

x represents the only lines that do not rhyme within the poem. A and B represent the refrain. The first four stanzas of the example poem are labeled for better understanding.

Example:
Child of His Earth

by Stephanie Repnyek

Spirits moving passionately (x)
Soaring with the wind… (a)
I am a child of the Earth, (B)
From the beginning to the end. (A)

God paints his canvas around me (x)
I come alive…a new rebirth (b)
From the beginning to the end (A)
I am a child of the Earth. (B)

Teardrops fall while giving thanks (x)
I hear the voices of the wind (a)
I am a child of the Earth, (B)
From the beginning to the end. (A)

When I’m lonely and blue… (x)
His touch shows me my worth (b)
From the beginning to the end, (A)
I am a child of the Earth. (B)

You can continue reading the poem here.

Today’s challenge: Write a poem in mirrorred refrain form. You choose your theme, and refraining lines following the stanza structure as described.