How to Write a Title for a Poem: The Ultimate Guide
Do you find yourself stuck when it comes to titling your poems? You're not alone. It can be challenging to come up with the perfect title that accurately represents your poem and grabs your reader's interest. In this post, I will go over everything you need to know to write a poem title that does both things.
Why Is Coming Up With a Poem's Title So Difficult?
If you're like me, you write your poem first and say: voila, poem written! And then you go, oh yeah, the title. Title, title, tile...
Writing a title for your poem can be difficult because most people write the poem first and then writing the title seems more like a chore than part of the joy of writing your poem. The title can seem to exist outside the world of your poem, so it's easy to get bogged down thinking about what on earth it should be.
But I'd encourage you to not think of the title as existing outside of your poem—the title is just as much a part of the poem as the body. So if you can reframe your thinking to consider the title as part of the poem's universe, it can become easier to write.
Let's take a look at what a great poem title achieves and some examples of on-point poem titles. In the examples below, the titles of the poems will appear in bold text.
What Does a Great Title for a Poem Accomplish?
Sometimes it seems like the title is just an afterthought or an advertisement to get people to read the poem, but this isn't so. A good title is just as much a part of the poem as the poem itself.
A good poem title can do many things.
Lead us into the poem
Provide orientation (place, time)
Make us think twice
Provide context (what is this really about?)
Make us curious about the poem
A Great Title Leads Us Into the Poem
One method of writing a good poem title is using the title to serve as the first line of the poem. In order to use this method, the entire title should both serve as the first line of the poem and give us an overall idea of what the poem is about.
Take the below example by Barbara Crooker. An excerpt of the poem appears below.
And Now It’s September,
and the garden diminishes: cucumber leaves rumpled
and rusty, zucchini felled by borers, tomatoes sparse
on the vines. But out in the perennial beds, there’s one last
blast of color: ignitions of goldenrod, flamboyant
asters, spiraling mums, all those flashy spikes waving
in the wind, conducting summer’s final notes.
As you can see, the title of the poem also serves as the first line of the actual poem. It even has a comma at the end of the line! But it also makes an excellent title because it encapsulates what the poem is about.
It lets the reader know this poem will be about the beginning of September, the beginning of fall, and the changing of the seasons. It's genius in its simplicity!
A Great Poem Title Provides Orientation
Another method for writing a poem title is to come up with a title that lets us know where we are in time and space. Take the example below.
"Awakening in New York" was published in 1983 in the great poet Maya Angelou's collection Shaker, Why Don't You Sing. This a short poem, so the entire text is shown below.
Let's see how she uses the poem title to bring context to her writing.
Awaking in New York
Curtains forcing their will
against the wind,
children sleep,
exchanging dreams with
seraphim. The city
drags itself awake on
subway straps; and
I, an alarm, awake as a
rumor of war,
lie stretching into dawn,
unasked and unheeded.
Here, the title serves as a reference point—it lets the reader know where we are and what this poem is about. The title is simple, but the words are poetic and tell a story.
If we were to read the poem without reading the title, we may enjoy it, but we may be left a little curious as to where we are and what's happening.
The title "Awakening in New York" tells us this is about someone waking up in New York and the city itself awakening. The word "awakening" also has multiple meanings. It can mean to literally "wake up" but it can also mean to realize something, or it can mean a change is occurring. So "Awakening in New York" gives us many roads to travel as we think about the poem's meaning.
Great Poem Titles Makes Us Think Twice About a Poem
A writer can use the title to give a whole different context to the poem that wouldn't exist without the title.
Read the short poem below by Langston Hughes.
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
What are your impressions? It sounds like a serene moment. It personifies the river, having it ask the writer for a kiss.
What a sweet love song to nature, right? Well, maybe things aren't as they seem once you add in the title.
Now here's the poem again with the title. Read it again.
Suicide's Note
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
Okay, now we are thinking twice about that sweet ode to the river! The author's title turns this individual story from a few lines about a river into a haunting story about the contemplation of suicide.
What I find interesting about this poem and its title the writer never takes responsibility for the suicidal thoughts. The river asks him to dive in head first, he's not thinking about it. The note belongs to suicide, not to the writer.
By personifying these elements, the poet achieves a certain distance from a terrible thought.
A Great Poem Title Makes the Reader Curious
If you want to grab a reader's attention and make them read their poem, your title should pique curiosity and get people wanting to find out more.
Take the poem title "Small Poems for Big" by Chinaka Hodge. Small Poems for Big? What is that all about? Who is Big? How small are these poems? See how this title gets us asking questions?
Now let's look at an excerpt.
Small Poems for Big
Twenty-four haiku, for each year he lived
when you die, i’m told
they only use given names
christopher wallace
no notorious
neither b.i.g. nor smalls
just voletta’s son
Okay! From the first two stanzas, the reader sees that the "Big" referred to in the title is none other than the Notorious B.I.G., Biggy Smalls, aka the late rapper, Christopher Wallace.
Again, another simple title that accomplishes so much. I love it.
What About Great Poems That Have Simple Poem Titles?
Now that we've discussed what a great poem title should do and looked at some examples, let's talk about the elephant in the room.
There are thousands of amazing poems by some of the greatest poets in all of literature that have very simple titles. The title is often either a repetition of a phrase or word that appears in the poem already or just labels the form of the poem (for example, "Sonnet 2").
If you're reading this post, it's likely that you have not yet become a master poet (nor have I). So until you are a master poet, all your poems should begin with creative titles that can stand on their own and get people to pay attention.
My Process for Writing Poem Titles
I'd like to share the process of coming up with poem titles for my chapbook White Noise Crucible (forthcoming 2022 from Dancing Girl Press).
Most of the poems were originally shared on my Instagram without titles, as is my usual style. When I was compiling these into a chapbook, I had at first decided to leave them there with no titles. Let them speak for themselves, I said.
Then when it was time to submit my final manuscript to the publisher, that is when I decided they should have titles, if only to have a table of contents!
Below is the first poem in the chapbook, now titled "passing through." I would label this title under the "makes us think twice" category of titles. Let's read the poem first.
passing through
photons penetrate
fill me with light
everything blooms
and passes
fleeting
life
"Passing through" has a couple of meanings in this poem. It can refer to the "photons penetrate" line, which is about light particles passing through our bodies. Or it can refer to the ephemeral nature of life and how we are just visitors passing through it.
This next poem title is an example of giving additional context to the poem. The poem title is "it's a reference to DNA." The title is meant to spell things out and help the reader understand the poem.
Without the title, I realized many people would not understand what this poem is about unless they can remember all the way back to high school biology. The letters in the last stanza G, A, C, and T refer to the nucleotides that comprise our DNA. The fact that they are mixed up means something has gone wrong and a mutation has occurred.
it’s a reference to DNA
magic had me dazzled
in a fated well
blackness boomeranged into me
no drag on the fletching of time’s arrow
to go back
to understand
what i had yet to learn
it is this:
eons are enemies
a crucible of time, mutation, selection,
meiosis, mitosis—
a G where a C should have settled
an A where a T should have been
How to Write a Title of a Poem
Anyone can write a good poem title, you just need to put some thought and care into it. I recommend looking at examples of poems from your favorite poets to gain inspiration if you are feeling stuck.
Remember the best titles for poems :
Lead us into the poem
Provide orientation (place, time)
Make us think twice
Provide context (what is this really about?)
Make us curious about the poem
Brainstorm 3-5 titles for your poem. It's good to see where your creativity can lead you. Then choose the best one!
Try using different methods from the list above. Avoid simply repeating a word or phrase that occurs in your poem. Make the title a part of your poem just as much as the rest. And make sure it's going to grab the reader's attention so that they'll move beyond the title and continue reading.
Best of luck in writing your titles. If you want to chat more about writing poem titles, DM me on Instagram @elysehartpoetry.
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