As Gertrude Stein has made us aware, we are our repeating. And, in truth, repetition (whether of sound, as in rhyme, or phrases, as in the use of refrain) is also an essential element in many poems, giving them their music. But beyond obvious (and over-used) forms, like pantoums and sestinas and villanelles, we'll discover patterns in free verse poems that can show us different ways to use repetition as a construction-method for poems on any subject we want to address. We'll look at some of these, and each of us will build a new poem using one or another of these patterns.
