Poets Talking Titles at Chicago Review of Books

We often wonder how exactly it is that poets come up with titles for their books. And we're not alone! At Chicago Review of Books, Sarah Blake ponders the same question. Blake writes: "A title is a tricky thing — trickier still for a collection of already titled things. For a collection of poems, can an individual poem’s title speak to the entire book? What about one piece of one poem — can that speak to the whole? Should a title say what hasn’t yet been said by the poems? Should it focus one’s attention? Should it capture a tone or mood? Should it be long or short? What makes a title memorable? Why does a title fit, and how do you know?" To get to the bottom of the matter, Blake enlists the help of four poets each with a new book out this year: Jennifer Chang, Some Say the Lark; Vanessa Angélica Villareal, Beast Meridian; kathryn l. pringle, obscenity for the advancement of poetry; and Aditi Machado, Some Beheadings. Let's take a look at the genesis of pringle's title:

The title of the book was born in a workshop led by Stacy Doris several years ago. She asked us to “write the obscene.” When I took this on the only way I could convince myself to write to the obscene was to take it on faith that Stacy was fostering my work by not only challenging my relationship to obscenity but also my relationship to poetry. At the time (and maybe most of the time?) my work was more abstracted and focused on systems and agency than narrative, and I wasn’t sure how I could fit the obscene into it and evoke a reader’s emotions on the gut level (which I think is pretty critical to obscenity). Thus, to remind myself that this was to further my work as a poet and also that it was an assignment and therefore very much like a prescription from my doctor, Obscenity for the Advancement of Poetry became the title for my obscenity work.

So, obscenity for the advancement of poetry: 3 is literally the third poem in a series of sketches interrogating the obscene. Each poem in the book works towards the notion that obscenity is in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I think obscenity: 3 is one of the more disturbing poems in the book. I’m an animal lover and very shaken by the mistreatment and abuse of animals. But more than that, I think this poem questions the reader’s relationship to otherness: other creatures, other humans, and other ways of being in the world by introducing gender fluidity. Some readers might find the dog’s name to be more disturbing than its condition, which I also find incredibly disturbing.

Read the other responses at Chicago Review of Books, along with sample poems from each title.