Even after a poem has been through a dozen drafts, and it’s starting to feel done, I still have to look at the blank top inch of the page and consider the title. Sometimes I have a placeholder title to fill that gap, but even after poems feel finished, and often even after they’re published, I still feel like I’ve given them the wrong name. It’s hard to decide when it’s ‘right’, but here are some other strategies for titling that I’ve used, noticed in others, or been told.
#1 Single: Many of the songs played over and over on the radio have titles that are apparent in the chorus so that when people call in to a radio station, it’s easy to request the song. Lots of people use this one if they’re fans of anaphora or a central idea or image is repeated in a poem.
I Will Now Set Up Various Layers of Context for the Poem You Are About to Read, or the James Wright Title: Wright was often fond of excessively long titles, like “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” and “As I Step Over a Puddle at the End of Winter, I Think of an Ancient Chinese Governor”. Titles this long can establish a lot of information before the reader enters the poem, such as place, physical situation of the speaker, tone, and content contained within the poem.
The Where’s Waldo Title: These titles are mysterious at first reading, but often appear buried within the poem. I feel this way when I read novels, too. I’ll have the title in my head and all of sudden I’ll come across the passage in the novel or the line in the poem that explains or reveals the title. Sometimes this method of titling feels tricky because as a reader I expect there to be an extra weight to that word or phrase once I find it in the poem.
Recurring Motif: Sometimes the titles link to poems that appear in other places of a manuscript. I have seen writers do this with a character/figure that recurs throughout a book, and I’ve also done it myself with titles like “Aubade with a Broken Neck,” “Aubade in which the Bats Tried to Warn Me,” etc. For me, the titling served as a way to get around sussing out a title from within the poem and also kept established the fact that all the figures in the poem were the same as the previous aubades.
The Secret Name: I’ve been very guilty of using Latin phrases or words in a foreign language to title my poems. Those words or phrases often do not appear within the poem, but give the reader a clue or the hidden name of that poem. I never mean for it to be cryptic or withholding, just to offer a different level of intimacy with the poem.
I’ve also been told to take a word or a phrase I’ve cut from a poem and use it to title the piece. There’s also the Dickinson option of foregoing titles and either numbering or using the first sentence as the title as well. No single approach has proved to be a consistent homerun for me, but almost nothing about writing a poems feels consistent every time. It’s like taking a divining rod into the desert and waiting for it to tremble.
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