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A sound device where the same word or phrase is repeated at the end of successive lines, clauses, or stanzas, creating a falling or resolving effect. Epistrophe emphasizes closure and finality and often conveys resignation, acceptance, or circular return. The device creates sonic patterns that linger in the ear and can underscore thematic weight or emotional significance. Epistrophe works well in combination with anaphora to create both opening and closing symmetries.
Compare poems using epistrophe with those using anaphora to understand the different emotional effects of terminal vs. initial repetition. Notice how epistrophe often appears in refrains or closing lines. Experiment with how epistrophe creates emphasis and closure in your own work.
You've worked with sound devices in poetry — rhyme, alliteration, assonance — and you understand how poetic repetition and refrain create rhythm and emphasis. Epistrophe is a specific and powerful member of this family: it places repetition at the end of successive lines, clauses, or stanzas, making the repeated word or phrase the last thing you hear before the line falls silent. That terminal position is everything.
Compare the emotional physics of anaphora versus epistrophe. Anaphora (the parallel device) repeats at the beginning: "I have a dream... I have a dream... I have a dream." The repetition launches each line, creating energy, accumulation, and propulsion forward. Epistrophe repeats at the end: the lines build toward their conclusion and then land on the same word, over and over. Where anaphora feels like waves gathering force, epistrophe feels like waves breaking on the same shore. The effect is one of closure, return, and inevitability — each line arrives at the same destination. Edgar Allan Poe's *The Raven* uses a variant of this when "Nevermore" ends each of the raven's utterances; the repeated terminal word becomes an inexorable verdict.
The emotional connotations of epistrophe cluster around finality and resignation. Because the line keeps ending in the same place, the poem enacts a kind of circular entrapment — you try different approaches, different thoughts, but always arrive at the same conclusion. This makes it particularly suited to grief, obsession, despair, or reverence. When W.E.B. Du Bois closes successive paragraphs with the same phrase in *The Souls of Black Folk*, the epistrophe creates a tolling, incantatory effect — each paragraph's individual argument collapses into the same final weight.
When combined with anaphora — repetition at both beginning and end — the device becomes symploce, and the line is bracketed by the same words. This creates an almost architectural symmetry. In analysis, always ask what the repeated terminal word or phrase *is*: its semantic content shapes the emotional effect. A poem ending lines on "alone" produces a different sensation than one ending on "free." The device makes whatever it repeats into a refrain of the soul — the word the poem keeps returning to because it cannot escape it.
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