From curse and praise poems to anaphora, epistrophe, and symploce with Martín Espada, St. Paul, and The Spinners

This morning in my poetry and songwriting class, I talked about poems that curse or praise. One common feature of such poems is the repetition of opening words or phrases, anaphora, as in the repeated "may" in the second half of this curse poem by Martín Espada, or the repeated "praise" in his "Alabanza". Anaphora led me to epistrophe, the repetition of closing phrases, as in 1 Corinthians 13: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child." And that led to symploce, the combination of anaphora and epistrophe, as in the chorus of "I'll Be Around", by The Spinners. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 18 October 2021)

 

The Spinners on The Midnight Special, 1973