Free The Everything Writing Poetry Book by Tina D. Eliopulos

us something different from the order “The mouse ate the cat.” Because word order is so important in the language, English has a set series of patterns for phrase and clause construction.
    Whenever the basic patterns are changed, however, you must recognize the difference and determine the meaning. For example, if you read “Sarah the ball hits” or “Sarah a mother is,” you can probably figure out that Sarah is the subject in both cases, but you would wonder why the ball and a mother have been moved. In poetry, moving words in this way can improve a piece. Rearranging words in a unique way can give your poem a stronger meaning or rhythm.
    Some examples of altered word order can be seen in Robert Browning's “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.” Three appear in the fifth stanza of the poem:
    When he finishes refection,
   Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
   As I do, in Jesu's praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
   Drinking watered orange-pulp—
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
   While he drains his at one gulp!
    Browning alters the normal clause pattern when he writes “Knife and fork he never lays/Cross-wise,” “I the Trinity illustrate,” and “In three sips the Arian frustrate.” In the common word order pattern, the first clause would read “He never lays knife and fork cross-wise.” The second would read “I illustrate the Trinity.” And the third would read “Frustrate the Arian in three sips.” But what has Browning gained by altering the pattern? The first and most obvious improvement is that every other line makes a rhyme. By altering the word order, he can rhyme lays with praise and illustrate with frustrate .

    As an exercise, write the following sentence on a piece of paper: “The girl found the ball in the attic.” Then, without adding or dropping any words from the original, shift the words into different positions. Which arrangements sound natural to you? Which sound forced or lack meaning?
    A second reason for changing the word order has to do with the meaning of the poem itself. The poem is told from the point of view of a monk who feels great indignation toward a fellow monk (the he of the poem). His anger, which he keeps internalized, is at odds with his pious actions—his observance of Jesus and the Trinity at the dinner table—and also opposes the calm demeanor that normally characterizes men of faith. The altered word order thus highlights the defiance of the speaker, showing how his frustration has disrupted his life.
    When to Use Repetition
    Throughout much of your formal education you were probably instructed to avoid repeating words in your writing. Certainly, in the sentence “He put the hat on and the hat sank down over his eyes,” repeating the word hat makes the sentence seem choppy and unpolished. Such repetitions can be avoided with a little extra effort.
    However, word repetition can work well in poetry. As with music, good repetition in writing can establish a melody that you can use to reinforce a message or strengthen an image. You've already read about rhymes, alliteration, consonance, and assonance; these are good forms of repetition to use in poetry. But there are several other forms of repetition that could be useful to you when writing poetry.
    The book Style and Statement , written by Edward P. J. Corbett and Robert J. Connors, includes examples of what they call schemes of repetition . Following are some of the schemes, given in their original Greek names:
    â€¢ Anaphora: repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of lines or clauses
    â€¢ Epistrophe: repetition of a word or phrase at the end of lines or clauses
    â€¢ Epanalepsis: repetition of a word at the start and the end of a word group
    â€¢ Anadiplosis: repetition of the last word of a group in the next group of words
    â€¢ Antimetabole: