Question

Inst lost one hundred words, describe how Robert Bly used repetition to heighten the emotional impact of "Counting

Answer 1

In his poem "Counting small-boned bodies", Mr. Bly brings up a series of cynical ideas around the practice of dead-body counting for statistical measures. Specifically, the free-verse poem criticizes the effects of the Vietnam war in 1955.

Firstly, Bly engages the incautious reader in the gore activity with an invitation "let's count the bodies over again". Inmediately after, a sadistic tone sets in when a both childlike and wicked narrator wonders "If we could only make the bodies smaller".

Throughout the poem, the latter verse is repeated twice more with the purpose of letting the reader anticipate a new evil fantasy to follow each time. In a Pavlovian sort of way, the reader learns to expect the hit of vivid imagery following this verse which naturally heightens the emotional impact through anxious anticipation.

The repetition in the poem reminds the cringing readers they are being forcibly carried along the horrors of war through cold-blodded visions which may emobdy the darkness within their own war-consenting society.