Epistrophe
Quick answer: Epistrophe is the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive lines, clauses or sentences. See how poets use it for emphasis and echo.
Epistrophe is the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive lines, clauses or sentences, the mirror image of anaphora, which repeats at the beginnings. It is also called epiphora; the two names are interchangeable. Because line endings are where readers pause, the repeated word lands with extra weight each time, tolling like a bell the poem keeps returning to.
Poets use epistrophe when one word is the poem's true subject and everything else is an approach to it. Each clause takes a different road and arrives at the same place, which creates a feeling of inevitability: whatever the sentence tries, it ends where it always ends. Grief poems and love poems both exploit this gravity.
How It Works
The end position is the strongest seat in any line, so repeating a word there compounds emphasis with expectation. An original example: We planted in the rain. We married in the rain. We buried him in the rain. The repeated ending turns the rain from weather into fate, and the changing verbs carry a whole history in three sentences. Note the mechanic: the fixed ending does the emotional tolling while the variable openings advance the story. Reverse those roles and the device collapses.
Where You Will See It
The most quoted example in English is not from a poem but a speech: Abraham Lincoln's government of the people, by the people, for the people ends three phrases on the same word. Saint Paul's meditation on childhood in 1 Corinthians closes clause after clause with as a child, an effect the King James translators kept. In poetry, Whitman ends runs of lines on a repeated word to close his catalogues, and modern spoken word leans on epistrophe because audiences hear end-repetition faster than any other pattern.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Choose the ending word before you write the lines, and make sure it can bear repetition: concrete nouns and elemental words, rain, salt, door, name, survive tolling better than abstractions. Then write approaches of genuinely different length and angle, so the fixed ending keeps surprising. Two other cautions: keep the run short, since end-repetition tires faster than anaphora, and consider ending the final repetition on a variation, letting the expected word fail to arrive. The absence can be the loudest toll of all.
What poets can take from this
- Pick a concrete, elemental word for the repeated ending; abstractions wear out fast.
- Vary the length and grammar of each approach so the fixed ending keeps its surprise.
- Keep the run to three or four repetitions; end-position echo tires quickly.
- Try withholding the expected word in the last line and let the silence land.
- Read the draft aloud and listen for tolling, not thudding.
Try it yourself
Choose one concrete noun that matters to you, then write a poem of five sentences in which the first four end on that word and the fifth refuses to. Make the refusal the point.
Questions
What is the difference between epistrophe and anaphora?
Anaphora repeats a word or phrase at the beginnings of successive lines or clauses; epistrophe repeats at the ends. Used together, beginning and end at once, the combined figure is called symploce.
Are epistrophe and epiphora the same thing?
Yes. They are two names for the same figure, one from Greek rhetoric via one route and one via another. Handbooks use them interchangeably.
Why does epistrophe feel heavier than anaphora?
Because readers pause at the ends of lines and sentences, so a repeated ending lands on the natural stress point every time. The effect is powerful but tires faster, which is why runs are usually short.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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