Monday, May 23, 2005
Title
Okay, as penance for the picture nonsense below, here's some actual writing about poetry. I saw a piece awhile back (I think it was on a blog, but I can't remember for sure, so if anyone can point me to it, I'll be grateful) about the various functions the title of a poem can serve. Since I can't recall where I saw it, I'm going to do a little noodling of my own on the various ways I think a title can work, with examples from literature, my own writing, and my editing experience.
(In the order I think of them)
1. Straightforward setting of the setting, subject, or scene so the poem can get right into description of it. James Wright's "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" is a great example of this, about as specific as you can get. My own poems usually have a little thematic hint or editorializing in their scene-setting titles, but "Fishing at Flint Lake" is a straightforward example. Rose Kelleher's "Rays at Cape Hatteras" from the 2005 Eleventh Muse is another good example of such titling.
2. A very simple statement of thematic concept that illuminates the matter of the poem in a new way. This one gets overused by bad poets using titles like "Death," "Love," and so on. Jack Gilbert's "Divorce" provides us with an example from a good poem. I'm very leery of such titles both as a writer and editor, but one of my poems is called "A Little Schadenfreude," and Michael Hettich's "Forgiveness" provides us with a good one from the 2004 Muse.
3. Repetition of a key phrase or line from the poem, either exactly or in close paraphrase. This is often a phrase from near the end that you will hopefully not have sitting at the front of your consciousness by the time you get to the phrase in the text itself. Philip Levine's "What Work Is" comes to mind (and by "comes to mind" I mean "is the first good one I found in my personal anthology"). This is another tack I don't take that often in my own work (and actually it seems to be somewhat underused across poetry), but I have one called "Good Indians" that takes its title from a famous (mis)quote about the only good Indian being a dead Indian. From the Muse, we have Karen Donovan's "I Love to Stand on the Backs of the Turtles" using a key phrase.
4. An amusing/catchy play on words or phrase based on the poem to interest the reader before they know the poem. Aaron Anstett's "Man Saves Own Life" is a nice example. I tend to overdo these in my own works. "Prayer to a Higher Horsepower," which appeared in Deborah's 32 Poems, is one of my many.
5. Going back to 2 (sorry about the order issues), a more ambiguous statement about the theme to help understand the poem test. Frost's "The Most of It" is a good example. I'm running way short of time, so I'll drop my own titles from here now. I think this one, along with the straightforward scene-setting of 1, makes up most of the titles in poetry.
6. Poems with the word "poem" in the title. I tend to like poems less as they become meta-poetry, so it's surprising how often I've used this gimmick.
7. Untitled poems, most of which make me cringe. I only like untitled poems when the very fact that it's untitled somehow adds to the theme of the poem.
Sorry I ran out of time at the end here. Anyway, I'm sure there are more functions/types, and I hope to hear about them from you, plus come back to the topic later.
(In the order I think of them)
1. Straightforward setting of the setting, subject, or scene so the poem can get right into description of it. James Wright's "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" is a great example of this, about as specific as you can get. My own poems usually have a little thematic hint or editorializing in their scene-setting titles, but "Fishing at Flint Lake" is a straightforward example. Rose Kelleher's "Rays at Cape Hatteras" from the 2005 Eleventh Muse is another good example of such titling.
2. A very simple statement of thematic concept that illuminates the matter of the poem in a new way. This one gets overused by bad poets using titles like "Death," "Love," and so on. Jack Gilbert's "Divorce" provides us with an example from a good poem. I'm very leery of such titles both as a writer and editor, but one of my poems is called "A Little Schadenfreude," and Michael Hettich's "Forgiveness" provides us with a good one from the 2004 Muse.
3. Repetition of a key phrase or line from the poem, either exactly or in close paraphrase. This is often a phrase from near the end that you will hopefully not have sitting at the front of your consciousness by the time you get to the phrase in the text itself. Philip Levine's "What Work Is" comes to mind (and by "comes to mind" I mean "is the first good one I found in my personal anthology"). This is another tack I don't take that often in my own work (and actually it seems to be somewhat underused across poetry), but I have one called "Good Indians" that takes its title from a famous (mis)quote about the only good Indian being a dead Indian. From the Muse, we have Karen Donovan's "I Love to Stand on the Backs of the Turtles" using a key phrase.
4. An amusing/catchy play on words or phrase based on the poem to interest the reader before they know the poem. Aaron Anstett's "Man Saves Own Life" is a nice example. I tend to overdo these in my own works. "Prayer to a Higher Horsepower," which appeared in Deborah's 32 Poems, is one of my many.
5. Going back to 2 (sorry about the order issues), a more ambiguous statement about the theme to help understand the poem test. Frost's "The Most of It" is a good example. I'm running way short of time, so I'll drop my own titles from here now. I think this one, along with the straightforward scene-setting of 1, makes up most of the titles in poetry.
6. Poems with the word "poem" in the title. I tend to like poems less as they become meta-poetry, so it's surprising how often I've used this gimmick.
7. Untitled poems, most of which make me cringe. I only like untitled poems when the very fact that it's untitled somehow adds to the theme of the poem.
Sorry I ran out of time at the end here. Anyway, I'm sure there are more functions/types, and I hope to hear about them from you, plus come back to the topic later.
Comments:
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Then there's the "title as first line" ploy, popularized, I think, by Marianne Moore (e.g. her poem "The Fish", the first lines of which seem to be "wade / through black jade"). In Moore's case, such titles rarely serve to highlight a theme or even the subject matter.
It's a cool technique when done well, though that almost never happens.
--CS
It's a cool technique when done well, though that almost never happens.
--CS
# posted by 
: May 24, 2005 1:34 PM
: May 24, 2005 1:34 PM
Yeah, I forgot to mention that type in my rush to finish because I had a bunch of other stuff to do. Amusingly, my first candidate to use as an example was also a Moore poem, "The Monkeys," though I really would have preferred to find a poem I truly like.
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