Analysis of the poem “Repetition”

    Phil Kaye, an excellent spoken word poet in America, writes the poem “Repetition”. He is very skilled in creating the art of performance poetry. Besides, he is also the author publishing certain works. With Sarah Kay, he founded Project VOICE, a club dedicated to promoting empowerment, improving literacy, and encouraging empathy and creative collaboration in classrooms and communities around the world. Most of the time, he travels around the world and performs his work and teach poetry workshops in venues including schools, theaters and prisons. His mother is a Japanese and his father is Jewish-American. His rich travel and project experience suggest that Phil Kaye pursues liberty and happiness. The poem is written in 2013 and represents a movement to create, share and listen to each other’s stories by the poetry. The style of the poem is narrative. Meanwhile, with one stanza, the poem utilizes a relaxed and dialogue-type or narrative form. Its main theme is that a child in the poem is abandoned because of divorce and how his or her inner emotions change

In my opinion, the speaker is a 7-year-old boy who is different from the poet and unknown gender. The poem mainly uses the first person on the whole because the first person can make readers feel warm and real when reading the poem. Meanwhile, with the first person, readers are easy to generate empathy and resonance towards the speaker and thus have huge room for reflection and feeling. The tone of the poem sounds telling a story in relaxed and spoken words, and is humorous as well, which is very clearly embodied in this poem so that readers could easily understand it. 

As for the beginning of the poem, the main idea is about a trick told by the speaker’s mother and some examples of repetition. The poem has no obvious rhyme scheme or internal rhymes, which is the same as “The Raven”. As for the alliteration, a good way of expression involving in both letters and sound, it is used properly in this part. Therefore, the words “meaning”, “nothing” or “calling” and “separation”, “dominating” or “language” are alliterative.  There isn’t onomatopoeia used here, while it utilizes other techniques such as metaphor and anaphora. Metaphor is used here like ‘When I came back there was no gravity in our home, beds floating’. “beds floating” is a metaphor indicating the speaker’s inner heart is vague or vacant. Originally, the metaphor “bed” is connected to or imagined as something relaxed and enjoyable. Instead, the “bed” of the poem is “floating” nowhere, creating an anxious and restless picture. Meanwhile, as for the anaphora, it is very easy to be found in the poem, such as “apart” and “wake up”. The technique not only reflects the title of “repetition” but also conveys the speaker’s inner anguished and unstable feelings. No matter what the techniques are used, a picture is shown by poet that a lonely and abandoned child gets hurt from the divorce and is deeply trapped in the sadness of the divorce.
As for the middle of the poem, this part’s main tells the speaker, becoming stuttered, is still trapped in the sadness of his or her parents’ divorce when growing up and takes the repetition as the favorite thing. Still, this part has no rhyme scheme or internal rhymes either. Alliteration and onomatopoeia cannot be found as well. However, apart from narration in this part, one simile is used quite well: Before their last argument they sent me off to the neighbor’s house, like some astronaut jettisoned from the shuttle. The abandoned speaker is just like the deserted shuttle, lonely and helpless. With the vivid simile and direct narration, the speaker’s inner loneliness and helplessness plus devastation is obviously presented before readers.

As for the end of the poem, the main idea sublimates the theme that the speaker still loves his or her parents regardless of getting hurt by the divorce. This part tells readers that people should learn to accept facts that have happened instead of escaping them. In this part, there are still no rhyme schemes or internal rhymes. The rhyme scheme here is rhythmed and catchy. Internal rhymes like ‘ok’ and ‘say’ exists. However, several techniques are used, such as metaphor, repetition and personification. The metaphor “floating bed” appears again, which is analyzed before. As for the personification, it is used like “the meaning of every word drag itself up your throat” or “Every terrible moment skips upon its own announcement”, which suggests that the speaker gradually step out of the sadness of divorce and learns to accept the fact. Meanwhile, the repetition, such as “I love you” and “separation”, are used for several times in the whole poem, and means the speaker still loves his or her parents deeply in this part. This part shows a pleased picture that the speaker becomes mature, accepts his or her parents’ divorce and conveys his or her love to them, which is the most important.