>Sometimes this involves repeating oneself until the form becomes 2nd nature.
>- Henry
Which makes me realise I had better finesse what I meant by "repetition",
aye a beautiful thing in a poem used well and also the sledgehammer of
dullards -
reading your usage of the quatrain Henry in _Stubborn Grew_ I have to say
that your repetitions seem to me to be rather more spirallings in towards
and out from perhaps the same centre but always towards surprise -
sometimes Coleridge's perpetual slight surprise, a continuous pleasure,
sometimes something more like dramatic or symphonic movements - Which
is hardly the kind of deadly emptying out of which I was thinking (I can
deliver examples on demand, but would rather not).
Who was it who said that repetition either deadens or richens? Might
have been Octavio Paz on making love - can't remember - but the two
qualities bear distinguishing one from the other.
Best
Alison
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