Epanalepsis
Quick answer: Epanalepsis repeats a word or phrase from the start of a line or sentence at its end, closing the loop. Learn how poets use this circular device.
Epanalepsis is the repetition of a word or phrase from the beginning of a line, clause or sentence at its end, so the unit closes on the sound it opened with. The Greek name means a taking up again. Where anaphora repeats across lines and anadiplosis passes words between them, epanalepsis works inside a single unit, bending it into a circle.
The circle is the meaning. A sentence that ends where it began enacts entrapment, obsession, or completeness, depending on the word it loops through. Poets reach for epanalepsis when a speaker cannot escape a thought, or when they want a line to feel sealed, finished, beyond appeal, which is why the device turns up in laws, curses and last words.
How It Works
The frame word gains a second meaning on its return, because everything between the two appearances has changed the reader. Take an original example: Hunger taught these hands their hunger. The first hunger is a condition; the second, after taught and hands, has become an inheritance. The middle of the line is a journey and the repeated word is both departure and arrival. If the word returns unchanged in force, the device has failed; the loop must tighten, not merely close.
Where You Will See It
Shakespeare is the great source in English. King Lear's cold warning to Cordelia, nothing will come of nothing, opens and closes on its terrible key word, and King John contains the doubled line blood hath bought blood, and blows have answered blows, two epanalepses running in parallel. Political rhetoric loves the figure for its air of finality, and you will hear it in proverbs, where the loop makes a saying feel ancient and settled even when it is neither.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Save it for the line that matters most, usually a first line or a last one, since a looped line draws the eye like a ring on a plain hand. Choose a word whose meaning can shift under pressure, and build the middle of the line so the shift happens. Do not use the figure twice in one short poem; two circles compete and both weaken. And test the line without the loop, because if the plain version says as much, the repetition is decoration rather than design.
What poets can take from this
- Reserve epanalepsis for one high-value line per poem, often the first or last.
- Pick a frame word whose meaning can change between its two appearances.
- Build the middle of the line to do the changing; the loop only displays it.
- Compare the looped line with a plain version and keep the loop only if it earns more.
- Listen for accidental epanalepsis in drafts; unplanned loops can distract readers.
Try it yourself
Write a ten-line poem whose first and last lines are both epanalepsis, each looping through a different word: one elemental, like salt or night, and one domestic, like kettle or key. Let the poem travel between the two circles.
Questions
What is the difference between epanalepsis and anadiplosis?
Epanalepsis repeats a word at the beginning and end of the same unit, closing a circle. Anadiplosis repeats the end of one unit at the start of the next, building a chain. One loops, the other links.
How do you pronounce epanalepsis?
Eh-pan-uh-LEP-sis, with the stress on the fourth syllable. The plural is epanalepses.
Does the repetition have to be a single word?
No. A whole phrase can frame the unit, as long as the opening words return at the close. Single words are more common in poetry because short loops keep the line taut.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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