Anaphora

Anaphora is the repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or sentences, so each new statement lands on a rhythm the reader is already expecting.

We asked in March. We asked again in June. We asked in writing, twice, and we are asking now.

The repeated opening does two things at once. It builds — each restatement is louder than the last because the reader is anticipating it — and it insists, because the repetition implies a patience that has run out.

It is the standard structure of public speech, from the King James Psalms through Churchill to Martin Luther King, and it works for the same reason in prose: parallelism with the pattern made unmistakable.

Two craft notes.

It needs an ending. A run of anaphora that simply stops is worse than no run at all. The last item should break the pattern, extend it, or land heavier than the ones before — the example above ends on the only clause in the present tense.

Three is usually the number. Two reads as a coincidence. Three is a figure. Five is a sermon, and it had better be one.

Its mirror image is epistrophe, which repeats the closing words instead. Do both at once and you have symploce.