One Thing To Remember While Writing

Writers can repeat a line for emphasis.

Repetition for Emphasis: Do you see another word inside "repetition"?

I see the word "petition." When we repeat a line for emphasis, we petition. We call our readers that this line is important. It carries special weight.

In the last stanza of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," the line "And miles to go before I sleep" appears twice. The last three lines in the poem are:

"But I have promises to keep, /
And miles to go before I sleep, /
And miles to go before I sleep."

Likewise, in "A Christmas Hymn" by Richard Wilbur (who won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry twice), the line "And every stone shall cry" is written twice in every stanza. The poem has four stanzas of eight lines each. Otherwise, we see one phrase, "And every stone shall cry," eight times in a 35-line poem. Not counting the three stanza breaks as lines (35-3), that's 25 percent of the entire poem.

I've never seen that before.

Plus, the epigraph (that suggests the poem's theme) is Luke 19:39-40, where Jesus proclaims that stones will cry out if His disciples do not speak.

Needless to say, "A Christmas Hymn" begs us to carefully observe the stones throughout Wilbur's biographical sketch of Jesus' life on earth.

Whether God uses inanimate objects (like literal stones that split after Jesus died) or God uses unlikely people to proclaim His message (like those cast as metaphorical "heavy, dull, and dumb" stones), God's Word will go forth.

And Little Rock American Christian Writers may rest assured: When writer's block hits (and we can hardly write a line, much less repeat a line for emphasis), God sees to it that what we can't get on paper still gets communicated if it falls within His sovereign will, even if God uses stones.

Why is that?

God has promises to keep. God has promises to keep.