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Lucy Almey Bird, “Sending Our Love” (2022)

Of mantras, one could say as the Latins did, ‘Repetita juvant,’ that is, ‘It’s useful to repeat things’.

Welcome, my friends and poets! Dora here from “Dreams from a Pilgrimage,” your host as we embark yet again on the poetry trail.

Writers of all sorts have found repetition of phrases or lines like a mantra to be a useful rhetorical tool. We all know Dickens’ famous repetition of “It was ….” to characterize the paradox of the revolutionary times at the opening of his “Tale of Two Cities.”

Mantras are also useful as motivational slogans (e.g., Nike’s 1988 slogan, “Just Do It,”) or mottos (guiding principles or received wisdom) that get us through hard times. The widow of a Christian missionary who was killed by cannibals tells of how she endured the following days, weeks, and months by repeatedly telling herself to “Do the next thing” that required her attention: the medical needs of that indigenous people group, the teaching, the mending, the cooking, the caring of her child.

Both these instances of mantras being used as a rhetorical tool and/or as a motto show up in poetry from the earliest times because of their strong lyrical appeal.

A Mantra as a Rhetorical Tool

“A minstrel sings of famous deeds,” J. R. Skelton, 1910

A medieval example of this is William Dunbar’s “Lament for the Makaris (or Makers),” written around the end of the 15th century in Middle Scots. In it the speaker of the poem, perhaps a scop or minstrel, repeats the Latin line, “Timor mortis conturbat me” (“The fear of death disturbs me”) to admittedly morbid effect in its original. (Read the poem in its translation here.) It begins:

excerpt; read the full poem here.

A more modern poet, Merrill Glass, repeats the line of her title, “But You Didn’t”.

“Californian Morning” by US artist and printmaker Emmy Lou Packard (1914-1998)

Joy Harjo, a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation and 2019 U.S. poet laureate, also begins each line of her poem with its title, “Remember.”

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time.

excerpt from Jo Harjo’s “Remember” (1983)
A French bee keeper who didn’t put the frames in his hive found this patterned sculptural magic the bees created by themselves.

Maryland poet Lizette Woodward Reese’s “Telling the Bees” written in the nineteenth-century repeats that titular phrase to drive home the immediate and lasting effect of seeing it done. The belief is that if the bees are not told of momentous events, they will swarm and leave the hive. (This custom is still practiced in England where the royal bee keeper, for example, announced the death of Elizabeth II to the royal hives.)

“To Asgard” (by Rachel Piercey & Emma Wright) welcomes the newcomer to the world of Norse mythology with the refrain: “Come across the rainbow bridge/to Asgard, where the Norse gods live!”

Indian author and poet Smitha Vishwanath repeats the titular “Burgundy,” the color becoming more than itself as it reflects her life. The following are the first two stanzas:

excerpt from “Burgundy” in The Thieving Magpie (Summer 2024)
An illustration from Topsell’s The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, 1658 via The Paris Review

And once read, who can forget the 74-line excerpt from the eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart’s “Jubilate Agno” (“Rejoice in the Lamb”) which begins “For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry”? Each of the next seventy-three subsequent lines begin their consideration with “For . . . .”

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.

excerpt from “Jubilate Agno” by Christopher Smart

Mary Oliver follows Smart’s pattern in writing of her much-loved dog, Percy.

excerpt from “For I Will Consider My Dog Percy.” Click on the link to also listen to Oliver read her poem.
Hennie Niemann jnr, The Musician (Oil on Belgian linen, 2016)

Nasser Rabah, a Palestinian poet living in Gaza, begins each line with “And a day goes by” in his poem, “Untitled,” (translated from the Arabic) about the death and devastation from ongoing attacks by Israel.

Amber Tamblyn in “This Living” begins each line with “It’s going to be . . . .” to confront the ups and downs of day-to-day alarms and expectations. It begins:

It’s going to be a lunar eclipse.

It’s going to be critically acclaimed and win
none of the awards.

It’s going to start as an argument
over what’s buried inside the tomb
but end in silence
over what’s discovered
beneath it.

It’s going to happen on your birthday
in front of the mailman,
while you’re receiving the letter for your sister
sent by her murderer.

excerpt from “This Living” from The New Yorker (June 3, 2024)
Illustration for Poe’s “The Raven” by Gustave Doré; to view more click here.

It being the spooky season, we can’t forget Edgar Allan Poe’s famous repetition of “nothing more” in “The Raven,” which eventually turns to “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore.’”

A Mantra as a Life Motto

It’s not only as a rhetorical device but as a life motto that a mantra can be useful.

Art by Fujiyama Nobu

Let’s start with the tenth-century Old English poem “Deor’s Lament,” which ends each stanza with the line, “That passed away; this also may.” The scop (ministrel) ends his lament saying:

This I can say for myself:
that for awhile I was the Heodeninga’s scop,
dear to my lord. My name was Deor.
For many winters I held a fine office,
faithfully serving a just king. But now Heorrenda
a man skilful in songs, has received the estate
the protector of warriors had promised me.
That passed away; this also may.

excerpt from Deor’s Lament; translation by Michael R. Burch

Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” (“It is sweet and fitting”) plays off culturally received wisdom, an aphorism upheld as a valuable dictum passed down from the Roman poet Horace who wrote, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”). Owen, writing during World War I, turns this motto on its head in the last stanza:

excerpt from Dulce et Decorum Est
Aldo Balding (British), “Kitchen Domaine D’ Audabiac” (2024, oil on canvas)

In “Find Work,” Rhina P. Espaillat, born in the Dominican Republic, tells of her grandmother’s use of that phrase to endure her hard life.

So her kind was taught to do—
‘Find work,’ she would reply to every grief—
and her one dictum, whether false or true,
tolled heavy with her passionate belief.

excerpt from “Find Work” (Poetry magazine, 1999).

“Don’t worry ’bout nothing. Don’t mean/no thing” is the optimistic reggae-like mantra the city offers Gabrielle Calvocoressi, poetry editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books, in “At Last the New Arriving.”

Max Ginsburg (American) “Susan with Jewelry.” (1997, oil on canvas, 10 x 7 in)

American poet Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” is a masterpiece of passionate resolve and resilience energized through that titular repetition of an irrepressible will to rise above the past. It begins:

excerpt from “Still I Rise”; listen below.

Each of these poems show the intrinsic connection between mantras and refrains in song and poetry. We use them to get through life, to explain, connect, and manage our experiences. We use them as musical refrains that play on our tongue and mind, and linger in our memory.

So your challenge is to either use repetition as a rhetorical device (repetition of a word or phrase or line) in constructing your poem; or to write a poem that centers around a motto, your own or perhaps passed down in your family or in your culture, showing how it’s been used or misused. Or, if you’re ambitious, see if you can do a combination of the two (as in “Deor’s Lament” & Angelou’s “Still I Rise”).

New to dVerse? Here’s how to join in:

  • Write a poem in response to the challenge.
  • Post your poem on your blog and link back to this post.
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  • Read and comment on your fellow poets’ work –- there’s so much to derive from reading each other’s writing: new inspiration, new ideas, new friends. Enjoy!

N.B. Poetics prompt stays open until Thursday, 3 P.M. (EST).