Day 26 of Na/GloPoWriMo 2019: Today’s (optional) prompt is centered around repetition. Repetition is at the heart of the rhetorical strategy of “Duplex.” We engage with it daily in the choruses of songs, and it’s long been recognized as one of the ways to keep a listener’s attention and create a sense of satisfaction or closure in spoken or written language, whether that language takes the form of a speech or a poem or even a comedy routine. Many forms of poetry expressly require or rely on repetition – for example, the villanelle or pantoum.

 

This is the truth and nothing but the truth so help me God:

Robert Johnson

did not sell his soul

at the crossroads

to the Devil

so that he could play the Blues

 

Robert Johnson

did not go to Hell

after he died

because he sold his Soul

to the Devil

so that he could play the Blues

 

Robert Johnson

was never at the

Crossroads

with guitar in hand

calling the Devil Forth

to sell his Soul

so that he could play the Blues

 

I know it for a fact,

I know this is true

because I am always at the Crossroads

and I know who has been there

because I am always here

when it’s time to pay up and pass through.