There are two kinds of writers—I learned implicitly in graduate school—the kind who repeats themselves over and over, in form, subject, or even beginnings or endings, and the kind who, miraculously to me, does not. I’ve heard the theory that poets write the same poem repeatedly over the course of their lives, which consoled me at the time yet didn’t seem to work in real life. I’d go to workshop, tired of my same-topic, same-form poem as last week, stuck in couplets or writing about my mom. Once, I brought in what I thought was a totally new poem to discuss with my professor, and he read it as a revision of an old poem. Trying to do something new but thought of as something old? This was a revelation I didn’t like. Repetition has a bad rap in a “culture that privileges novelty and growth over the cyclical and regenerative” (Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing ), often signifying stuckness or a lack of originality—of not being your own person. In and beyond poems, I worried about life repeating itself.…