I'm wondering whether others here have heard of what I was taught in a workshop years ago, the "rule of two," which says, in effect, that whenever you do something unusual in a poem you should do it at least twice so the reader won't jump to the conclusion that the first time was just a mistake.
I suppose this "rule of two" relates a bit to the Lewis Carrol quote on the rule of threes. The idea being that people are more likely to believe and accept something after two or three exposures although they might have been skeptical after just one.
Many trial lawyers are also taught, though usually without reference to Lewis Carroll, that a jury needs to be exposed to a contention three times before they'll believe it. Irving Younger, a famous teacher of trial techniques, used to say something like, "Tell a jury something once, and they think it may be true. Tell it to them again, and they think it is probably true. But tell it to them three times, and there's no force on earth that can convince them it isn't true." In other words: What I tell you three times is true.
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