Anaphora

    This article is about the rhetorical term. For other uses, see Anaphora (disambiguation).
    Look up anaphora in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.In rhetoric, anaphora (from the Greek ἀναφορά, "carrying
    back") is the repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of several consecutive sentences or
    verses to emphasize an image or a concept.

    Mad world! Mad kings! Mad composition!
    — (William Shakespeare, King John, II, i)
    We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and
    oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island,
    whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in
    the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.
    — (Winston Churchill)
    Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer! (One people, one empire, one leader!)
    — (Adolf Hitler)
    What the hammer? what the chain,
    In what furnace was thy brain?
    What the anvil? what dread grasp.
    Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
    — (William Blake, from The Tyger)
    I Have A Dream, that one day...I Have a Dream...I Have a Dream
    — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
    We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.

    — George W. Bush
    It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it
    was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of
    Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing
    before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way . . .
    — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

    The term "anaphora" comes from the Greek for "a carrying up or back," and refers to a type of parallelism
    created when successive phrases or lines begin with the same words, often resembling a litany. The repetition
    can be as simple as a single word or as long as an entire phrase. As one of the world’s oldest poetic techniques,
    anaphora is used in much of the world’s religious and devotional poetry, including numerous Biblical Psalms.

    Elizabethan and Romantic poets were masters of anaphora, as evident in the writings of William Shakespeare,
    Sir Philip Sidney, and Edmund Spenser. Shakespeare frequently used anaphora, in both his plays and poems. For
    example, in Sonnet No. 66, he begins ten lines with the word "and":

    "Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
    As to behold desert a beggar born,
    And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
    And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
    And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,
    And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
    And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,
    And strength by limping sway disabled
    And art made tongue-tied by authority,
    And folly--doctor-like--controlling skill,
    And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
    And captive good attending captain ill:
    Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,
    Save that, to die, I leave my love alone."

    Not only can anaphora create a driving rhythm by the recurrence of the same sound, it can also intensify the
    emotion of the poem. Grief is deepened in Lord Alfred Tennyson's "Tears, Idle Tears" by the repetition of "the
    days that are no more" at the close of each stanza, in a variation of anaphora called epistrophe, where the echo
    comes at the end of the phrase instead of the start.

    Allen Ginsberg's Howl, Walt Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," Section V of "The Waste Land" by
    T. S. Eliot, and "From a Litany" by Mark Strand are all excellent examples of how modern writers have found
    inventive ways to use anaphora. Joe Brainard used anaphora to recalling his Oklahoma youth in his book-length
    poem "I Remember " by starting each phrase with "I remember." For example:

    "I remember a piece of old wood with termites running around all over it the termite men found under our front
    porch.

    I remember when one year in Tulsa by some freak of nature we were invaded by millions of grasshoppers for
    about three or four days. I remember, downtown, whole sidewalk areas of solid grasshoppers.

    I remember a shoe store with a big brown x-ray machine that showed up the bones in your feet bright green."

    Brainard’s technique was so effective that Kenneth Koch adapted it for teaching children how to write poetry,
    and the method continues to be popular with writing teachers for students of any age.
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