Repetition can be extremely effective in some poems. When you’re working on a poem, ask yourself if the poem would sound better if you repeated a line or two. Be honest. Sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes it’s no. Don’t repeat a line just because you’re lazy and can’t think of anything else. I admit that I sort of did that in the yak poem, but it worked. If it hadn’t sounded right, I would have tried something else or perhaps never finished the poem.
You’ll discover that most of the poems you write don’t need repeated lines and might even suffer from them. You have to use your heart and your brain and your ears and your instincts to tell you when repetition is the best thing for a particular poem. I wish there were an easier way to explain this, but I can’t think of one. I repeat…I can’t think of one.