Repetition

Repetition is a signature device that Vallejo used throughout his career as a poet. The opening line of “The Black Heralds” is repeated as the last line for emphasis and to create an enclosed structure or circle. This enclosure may represent the prison of life that constrains humanity with time limits and physical limitations or the freedoms taken away by government and social status. The phrase, “I just don’t know,” not only ends the first and last lines of the poem but also the first and last lines of the first stanza in order to underline the frustration of the inexplicable.

In the seventeen lines of “The Black Heralds,” Vallejo uses the word “blows” four times: in the first and second lines to establish blows as the subject, in the eleventh line, to remind the reader of the...