Should Poems Have a Title?

Photo by Alisa Anton on Unsplash

If you read a lot of poetry, you will notice that there are many poems out there without a title. In fact, a very famous poet, Emily Dickinson, did not title any of her poems. The choice to title poems is up to the author. It is the readers right to have an opinion on whether a title should be placed or not. I am of the belief that the choice of titling a poem is a matter of artistic expression.

There was a time in my life when I titled some of my poems and left others without a title. Now I title everything. The reason for that is because, submitting a poem for publication, I got rejected. The reason they gave me was that they could not figure out what the poem was about. I realized that adding a title would add clarity and add a little extra something to the poem. I titled the rejected piece, "It's All About The Sky," and don't remember if I submitted it for publication anywhere else.

I also choose to add titles to my poems for easier organization and recognition. When writing many pieces, it is helpful to have an indicator of which piece is being talked about in a conversation or in a paper. It also helps in poetry collection books. It can be argued that a title to a poem is unnecessary for organization. When a poem has no title, its first line becomes the title. That has been the case with Dickson's poems in my English books. Still, I think titles are beneficial for clarities sake.

I have run into the problem of giving some of my works the same title. It will be quite a project going through my writings and figuring which titles should be changed, or if I am willing to have some of my poetry titled the same. I have so many poems that giving every piece a different title might be unattainable. It is possible that I may choose to have the first line of my poem become the new title. If this is the case, I will write that one line down twice. There's nothing wrong with a little repetition in poetry.

 

It is kind of weird that some poets choose to go without. An author would probably not write a book without a title. That would be weird. It may be that some poets don't title their poetry for the very sake of weirdness. That's fine. Titling poetry is a choice. I have nothing against authors who choose not to title their poems. I, however, now choose to title mine.

Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash

 

They Left Out the Title

Empty words expected to be gleaned through inference.
But how can we tell when the line before and the line after is left blank?
It puts a new meaning to 'reading in between the lines'.
Reading the words after blank spaces,
our hearts may be captivated
and our creativity may spell the subject out.
Our own interpretation.
That must be the hope of those who left the title without.