Fill in the Blank

This week’s poem began with the question, how many times can you use the word blank in a poem?

There are plenty of poems that repeat words or that riff on the multiple meanings of words. Refrains of songs are a form of repetition. Villanelles and sestinas use forms of word or phrase repetition to alter and enhance the meaning of that word or phrase. Anaphora is word or phrase repetition in successive lines/clauses and is used in poetry and elevated, often formal speech–such as Dr. Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.

You may be familiar with Robert Frost’s poem ‘Acquainted with the Night’. The first stanza is:

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain–and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

You get the feel of the repetition from the beginning of the poem, and you can read the whole of the fourteen line poem, and some further discussion of it, here.

At the extreme use of repetition (among other techniques) are poets such as Gertrude Stein, of a rose is a rose is a rose fame, who used repetition to create experience through sound instead of narrative denotation.

Fill in the Blank charts an approach somewhere in the middle of those I’ve described, with over 30 repetitions of blank and a couple excursions to include blankness and blankety-blank while hopefully remaining more approachable than poems of the avant garde.

“Blank” is an interesting concept. It’s a state of pre-being, pre-creation. It’s a state of emptiness, of waiting, of isolation and erasure.

Is this the most repetition I can get into a poem? Probably not. But for this poem, I think it’s enough.

Fill in the Blank

Be not afraid of the blank, but of the blank behind the blank,
because it’s all blank there, all awfully blank,
with nothing but blank left behind, and oh,
blank looks like it isn’t blank, like it’s almost not blank,
but it’s blank blank blank, all the way down, and tomorrow more blank,
and even a blind blank finds a blank on occasion,
but it’s blank inside and blank out, and blank clothes hang on the line,
and no blankety-blank occasion is needed for blank
because every blank day is the right day for blank, and blank minutes too,
and blank hours or only what seem like blank, because blankness begets blankness,
and where blank can’t beget it masquerades as more blank,
and blank me, blank you, and blank you all up,
there isn’t enough blank in the cupboard, not enough in the sky,
not enough that could fill up the blank left by blank.

If you enjoyed Fill in the Blank

You’ll find more of my poems on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.  Missed a poem of the week? Links to prior weeks are on this page.  

And, comments welcome, as always–have a great week, and look for another poem next Monday.