Crochet a row. Put it down. Type on computer. Repeat.
Virginia Woolf extolled the virtues of a country walk as a way to "rock oneself" back into writing. The gentle swaying of a crib that she evoked in that statement, is the feeling I have when doing needlework, especially crocheting or knitting. It is this actively calm rhythm which loosens my thoughts from the drive of delivering information, getting a point across, or thinking in a way that is outcome-based.
Beyond the repetitive motion which rocks me into a sentence, there is also a repetition in a sentence or a poem which pleases my ear. In prose it is a careful assonance or alliteration which lets me know the writer wasn't just interested in delivering me from point A to point B, but that she intended to use the best language to get me there. It might also be a phrase that comes back and increases the tension of the narrative through its repetition.
In a longer poem I might check the repetition of a key phrase and ask myself what purpose it serves.
The use of repetition can condense and unify visual scope
In Anne Sexton's poem "It Is a Spring Afternoon," there is a very long series of scenes, and a key scene of a girl outstretched on a tree limb. After we are introduced to her for the first time, Sexton repeats the phrase "Everything here is yellow and green."
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This repetition acts as a gathering point for all the other images before the image of the girl, and the images after, to bring the landscape of the poem and its meaning into focus around the image of the girl and her naked body.
It Is a Spring Afternoon
by Anne Sexton
Everything here is yellow and green.
Listen to its throat, its earthskin,
the bone dry voices of the peepers
as they throb like advertisements.
The small animals of the woods
are carrying their deathmasks
into a narrow winter cave.
The scarecrow has plucked out
his two eyes like diamonds
and walked into the village.
The general and the postman
have taken off their packs.
This has all happened before
but nothing here is obsolete.
Everything here is possible.
Because of this
perhaps a young girl has laid down
her winter clothes and has casually
placed herself upon a tree limb
that hangs over a pool in the river.
She has been poured out onto the limb,
low above the houses of the fishes
as they swim in and out of her reflection
and up and down the stairs of her legs.
Her body carries clouds all the way home.
She is overlooking her watery face
in the river where blind men
come to bathe at midday.
Because of this
the ground, that winter nightmare,
has cured its sores and burst
with green birds and vitamins.
Because of this
the trees turn in their trenches
and hold up little rain cups
by their slender fingers.
Because of this
a woman stands by her stove
singing and cooking flowers.
Everything here is yellow and green.
Surely spring will allow
a girl without a stitch on
to turn softly in her sunlight
and not be afraid of her bed.
She has already counted seven
blossoms in her green green mirror.
Two rivers combine beneath her.
The face of the child wrinkles.
in the water and is gone forever.
The woman is all that can be seen
in her animal loveliness.
Her cherished and obstinate skin
lies deeply under the watery tree.
Everything is altogether possible
and the blind men can also see.
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