Asked why he chose the titles of his first two books from two major European poets of the previous century, Chinua Achebe gave the unexpected but completely reasonable answer: he was trying to show off. He confessed that he liked ‘Journey of the Magi’ and Yeats’s ‘The Second Coming’; but the reason was that ‘I took a general degree, with English as part of it, and you had to show some evidence of that.’
If the second book—No Longer at Ease—fails to carry its title well (the title totters on its lean neck), Achebe’s debut—Things Fall Apart—has made Yeats’s phrase more famous; and I think it has pushed those three words into a new resonance. But considering how both titles were chosen, if we read the poems alongside the novels, would the novels in fact clarify something in the poems for us? Would some new revelation emerge that was hitherto hidden from us? Would our understanding of the novels (and the poems) be enriched?
(Those are questions to ponder.)
We don’t often take thought of titles; they are not so much a part of the making of a poem, though every once in a while we agonize in our search for a fitting one. And we save fine phrases that we think may work as titles. (I checked a document from five years ago and found this: ‘Possible Chapbook Title: I want to sing different, but my mouth is a possession of crows.’ Once upon a time, I had this as a working title: ‘I must say that I want to be truly happy’ (from a poem by Chinua-Ezenwa Ohaeto). I was quite high in those days.)
Wouldn’t it be great if one could call the first book, ‘Poems’ (like Auden did); the second book—‘Second Poems’ (like W. S. Graham did); the third, ‘Poems the Third,’ etc.? Even if. One would still have to title individual poems.
Titles may not make or mar a book, but one should take thought when choosing them. I do not have magical powers, but it is possible to tell whether a piece is any good by its title (in certain cases). Unless a poet has a feel for the weight of words, for the historical baggage that certain phrases carry, he would not title a book House of Lords and Commons (being a Jamaican poet): that title shows a historical sense, gotten and worked through by way of language. Same applies to Geoffrey Hill’s Canaan and J. P. Clark-Bekederemo’s State of the Union.
“Sometimes titles are the only sanity available to the reader.”
A title can be direct or open. It can also be cryptic and indirect. Indirectness, I should add, is not the same as being cryptic. Titles may exist at a slant to poems (and I think they are best when they do), but rarely do they serve as sealed locks designed to keep readers at the door of the poem. When a title feels like a lock, it is probably because of two things: 1) the poem is difficult; and 2) a gulf separates the poet from his readers (the poet’s working knowledge is remote).
Things Fall Apart is a simple title. One cannot confuse its implications. Without knowledge of the poem it was culled from, it still makes sense. No Longer at Ease is not as simple but it is open to those who are familiar with the poem and makes some sense once you have read the novel. ‘Journey of the Magi,’ likewise; and so, too, ‘The Second Coming.’
All four titles require a knowledge of a preceding material. The preceding material of T. S. Eliot’s poem comes from the Gospels: the story of the three wise men. Yeats’s poem is also in dialogue with a theme central to the Gospels (and Epistles), though its dialogue is negative rather than positive. It controverts by subverting: ‘Surely the second coming is at hand.’ What it heralds (even with its KJV-like language) is not Christ but some dreadful ‘being’ supplanted by Christ’s first coming.
‘The Second Coming’ is not a hopeful, glorious coming; it is going to be (as Yeats saw it) the birth of disaster. That ‘rough beast’ that ‘slouches towards Bethlehem to be born’: its birth would be a matter of terror and dread. Joan Didion had her hand on the nub of the matter when she titled her book of essays ‘Slouching towards Bethlehem.’ Didion puts down, in the preface, why she chose the title: she was living through despair, it was in the air. (As an aside, I don’t know if I know any verb more profoundly dramatic—docile in its activity, almost; actively docile—in a poem, than ‘slouches’ is in ‘The Second Coming.’)
Would the Yeats poem have the epical force it has if it had been titled ‘Things Fall Apart’ or ‘The Widening Gyre’? Does the title make any difference?
Yes. The title makes the poem more than an imagistic rant (this would be the impression if the title were ‘The Widening Gyre’); and the negative energy that it carries is concentrated and brought into sharper focus by the phrase, which until Yeats used it in his work was positive (far as I know).
Titles are the surest guides to poems. They coordinate our gaze. They direct our attention.
Take the title Romey’s Order (Atsuro Riley’s debut) or The Rinehart Frames (Cheswayo Mphanza’s). Both are ways of reading the poems in the book. They are statements of intent. Mphanza’s title takes the name from Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man and combines that with Abbas Kiarostami’s 24 Frames (there are 12 ‘frames’ in the collection). In other words, you have subject and method or technique. Or, to put it differently, you have ‘ambition.’ This is what I am about; this is what I hope I have done, the poet appears to be saying.
The same applies to Riley. The collection opens with: ‘An order where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew,’ from Seamus Heaney’s Nobel Speech (which has moments that are as eloquent as some of the finest moments in the Irishman’s poems). Romey is Riley’s Rinehart; the poems are ‘an order’ where he is trying to grow up to . . .
Sometimes titles are the only sanity available to the reader. They make an insufferable poem a little more bearable. Think of ‘The Imprisonment of Obatala’ by Clark-Bekederemo. But for the title we would not know what the poem is trying to get at. However, after catching the gist about what happened to Obatala in Oyo and returning, the poem does not resolve itself. We see faint semblances but that is all. At least the faint semblances, which are the result of following the guide in the title, are a consolation.
Another example of this is Hill’s ‘To the High Court of Parliament November 1994’—the date refers back to John Milton’s ‘Aeropagitica’ published in November 1644 and which mentions the ‘High Court of Parliament’ in its first sentence. But I do not know whether knowing that fact makes entrance into the poem any easier. Perhaps one must read Milton’s speech (I haven’t) and be familiar with the political climate inside of which Hill wrote. (I must say that the obscurity of Hill’s poem is not the same as Clark-Bekederemo’s: the latter fails from a wobbly hand.)
“Trying to impress with a title is a sign one has no confidence in the poem that one has written.”
If a poem is difficult, one should make sure to provide a way of escape in the title (as both poets discussed above did). It can be annoying to have a locked poem before your face that has a broken key for a title. I can think of one poem right now: ‘Surveillance from a High-Powered Proteus At Eagle Square, Circa Redacted’ (by Njoku Nonso). First, there are too many big words that, placed together, confuse the reader’s intelligence: Proteus, for instance, does not need to be ‘high-powered.’ What does ‘Circa Redacted’ mean? Around edited? Time edited? The phrase might have worked if it was well punctuated: perhaps ‘Circa (redacted).’ Overall, the ‘high-powered’ words sitting at the head of this poem—a poem that moves from ‘an Egyptian pyramid’ to ‘Jonah’s phantom’ and ‘Newtonian disavowal’ (etc.) in almost no time—make the verbosity more verbose.
A poet would find it hard to get a good title for a rant of a poem (this is the case with Nonso’s ‘Surveillance’). But it is not unheard-of for a poet to write a good poem and shame it with a bad title. Think of Nome Emeka Patrick’s first poem in Poetry. It is an unnecessary title; the show-off is completely unnecessary. ‘The Garden’ might have worked well as a title; but the poet wanted to impress. (Though the urge to impress lights the lyrical voice impressively, image after sharpened image.)
Trying to impress with a title is a sign one has no confidence in the poem that one has written. Four Quartets is simply titled Four Quartets. Unassuming titles are the best. Think The Best of It, the title of a major poet’s selected (Kay Ryan). Or Every Riven Thing. ‘Schubertiana.’ The Old Man and the Sea. ‘Digging.’ ‘Tender Crow’s Feet.’ Titles that are overbearing keep the poems from sailing long and far (I bet Patrick’s ‘Sylvia Plath’ would be more widely read if it had a simpler title). And melodramatic titles (Night Sky with Exit Wounds, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, ‘Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong’) tend to sell the work short.
“Titles are the surest guides to poems. They coordinate our gaze.”
Have you done the best you can for the poem? Then send it sailing with as little by way of gear as it needs to stay afloat. It should be a title easy to say, to keep in memory (‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’; ‘The Death of the Hired Man’; ‘The Illiterate’). It may have (reflect) character (‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’; ‘Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift’), a flair (Much Ado about Nothing). It may stand tangentially to the poem so that energy bounces off between the head and the body, so that the poem pursues something in the title (‘Valéry as Dictator’). It may excite. But it need not dazzle.
Not at all. 🔷
If you enjoyed reading this, check out other Notes on Craft: ‘No 1’; ‘No 2’; ‘No 3’; ‘No 4’; and ‘No 5.’
In other news. A video from the workshop I taught in May is up on YouTube: Poetry, Ambition, and the Age (1). Check it out, share it with those who may need it, and subscribe. The next video will be up soon. Thank you.
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This is brilliant.