If you read a lot of older poetry, you may notice that many poems didn’t have titles, only numbers, or were the same as the first or last line. These days, titles are expected to not only grab a reader’s attention, they are expected to do work. How does a title do work? A title may:Orient the reader: in space and time, or introduce the character or speaker and what they’re doing
Allude to a story or myth
Set the tone
Offer interpretive framework
Create a Striking Contrast
Provide a revelation about what the poem is about that the reader won’t understand until they’ve read the poem
With all these ideas in mind, after you write your poem, don’t just throw your first idea for a title at the top. List as many possible titles as you can think of and go for the one that makes the reader re-read the title, say “Aha”, and want to read the poem again.
Example poem: “The Abduction” by Stanley Kunitz from Poets.org
The Abduction
Some things I do not profess
to understand, perhaps
not wanting to, including
whatever it was they did
with you or you with them
that timeless summer day
when you stumbled out of the wood,
distracted, with your white blouse torn
and a bloodstain on your skirt.
“Do you believe?” you asked.
Between us, through the years,
we pieced enough together
to make the story real:
how you encountered on the path
a pack of sleek, grey hounds,
trailed by a dumbshow retinue
in leather shrouds; and how
you were led, through leafy ways,
into the presence of a royal stag,
flaming in his chestnut coat,
who kneeled on a swale of moss
before you; and how you were borne
aloft in triumph through the green,
stretched on his rack of budding horn,
till suddenly you found yourself alone
in a trampled clearing.
That was a long time ago,
almost another age, but even now,
when I hold you in my arms,
I wonder where you are.
Sometimes I wake to hear
the engines of the night thrumming
outside the east bay window
on the lawn spreading to the rose garden.
You lie beside me in elegant repose,
a hint of transport hovering on your lips,
indifferent to the harsh green flares
that swivel through the room,
searchlights controlled by unseen hands.
Out there is a childhood country,
bleached faces peering in
with coals for eyes.
Our lives are spinning out
from world to world;
the shapes of things
are shifting in the wind.
What do we know
beyond the rapture and the dread?
~Stanley Kunitz
What work is the title doing for this poem? Without the title, would you have understood the poem differently?
Prompt: Write a poem about hearing someone else’s monster encounter. Do you believe them? Or just play along? What convinces you, or doesn’t? End the poem with an open-ended question?
Possible form: Narrative poem
~
Who Does It Follow Next?
He told me the thing came at dawn,
shoes in his hands, mouth full of copper,
like the sky had been peeled
and something darker was underneath.
He said it wasn’t tall—
only wrong.
Its joints bent in ways
bones don’t bargain for.
He swore it dragged a sound
like a violin string pulled too tight
but never snapping.
I nodded.
Of course I nodded.
We’ve all had nights that misbehave,
dreams that wake up before we do.
Still, he looked like a man
whose shadows whispered back.
He remembered its eyes
too well.
Not glowing—
not anything dramatic—
just patient,
like it knew a name
he’d forgotten to answer to.
When he showed me the scratch
on his shoulder,
I recognized it—
three neat marks
as if trimmed by garden shears.
I wanted to believe
in an animal,
in anything ordinary,
in something the world
already had a word for.
But the way his voice flickered
when he said it spoke—
I’ll admit
I felt my stomach lean
in the direction of wonder,
then fear,
then both.
He asked if I believed him.
I checked his eyes,
steady as nailed-down stars.
I said I believed enough.
After all, what’s truth
to a story that still bleeds?
If a monster chooses someone
once,
does it ever stop coming back?
And if it does… who does it follow next?
~ Oizys.