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Titles

8/18/2013

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I try to keep abreast of various online poetry groups.  There is a great deal to be learned from them.  I use these groups as a testing ground for my ideas on writing, and I usually encounter some truly fascinating and provocative questions.  

In a recent group, someone asked about "titles," wondering whether they are important to a poem.  My opinion on titles runs headlong towards the "Yes" column.  Some of what follows are my responses to that question in one such group.

A title is a tool that can perform a number of roles  for a poem, such as giving the reader a heads-up about what to expect in a piece, to encapsulate it subtly, or even to enhance the irony of a poem.   There's also the issue of being able to reference a work in the  index of a book of poetry.


Once in a while I receive a response to a poem that I could not have anticipated, such as when readers reveal intense, personal insights in a poem that I hadn't intentionally written there. I could see it clear as day, though, once they pointed it out.  In such a case, too much in the title could have steered them amiss. 

But, if a poem has no title at all, how does one introduce it in conversation? "Well, it's the one about the guy who loves a girl..."  Good luck tuning in to that one.  I could memorize a few lines and recite them to reference a poem, I suppose, but a title is so wonderfully handy.   

I often pull a word or a phrase from within a poem to serve as its title.  This is my favorite method of finding a name for the piece without giving too much away.  Plus, finding such a title often gives me a delightful 'ah ha" moment about the poem I've just written. 
 
It is my preference that the reader should be able to understand my poems without any overt "hand-holding."  If I give it too much introduction, I'm essentially saying, "You won't understand this, so here is what I intend for it to say."   To me, this is a negative call-out that says to the reader,  "I don't trust that you're going to get it."

Now and then, I run into tremendous difficulty coming up with a good title for a poem, and sometimes I have to walk away, having given a piece a temporary name.  I do not consider my work to be finished until it bears its own appellation.

As this topic was born in an online poetry group, I think it only fitting that I recommend such groups to other poets as well as to readers.  I'll leave it here with one caution, though: "Do not hold what goes on in such groups too dearly.  We/they are all just trying to work out these issues about poetry.  No harm, no foul."

  

 


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    About the author:

    I've written many poems over the years.  This blog is a preview of my books: Echoes, Neo-Victorian Poetry (April 2013), Echoes ll, More Neo-Victorian Poetry (May 2014), Echoes lll, Even More Neo-Victorian Poetry, (August 2016), A Compilation of Echoes. (September 2016), and When None Command (April 13, 2019)

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