How do you come up with titles for your poems? How important are titles? I started out as a slammer, so never had them before, and I am struggling with naming a lot of pieces as I create my first chapbook.

ok, well if you educate me as to what a chapbook is, I will give you my $1 of info on the subject.
The following is my personal view, and should not be construed as being in any way representative of 'the rules' or, textbook dogma.

1 I sometimes write a poem based on a title
2 Titles, or rather phrases which become titles, just come to me, or get borrowed from the ideas of others, or from tv or radio etc.
3 For Haiku and Senryu I find choosing a title is either:

a) uneccessary
b) a clue or two for the reader
c) something aesthetically topical

and I apply all of those regularly, probably no.2 the most, and of course on this site you have to have a title (don't you?)

4 I will often start apoem with a title, then finish and get inspired to choose a - seemingly - better or more appropriate title, inspired from the poem itself.

5 Titles have an air of neatness about them. It's like books having a foreword, nobody really spends a great deal of time reading them or thinking about them other than the author or publisher; it's almost like there's something missing without one though, however useless they may be.


The Great Summary.
by LordFuznut

In summary then, I personally think that titles serve a many and varied purpose, mainly aesthetically, but also equally as much for the terrific practical purpose of creating a set beginning, or thinking point, if you like, before the beginning, so to speak.

The end.

Sometimes a title adds to a piece, but more often than not, it just lets you refer to the poem by name. In this light, it just shouldn't be confusing. I usually like to pick out phrases in the poems as titles, or at least choose something that refers to the subject.

hi , i read somewhere that Haiku should not have a title ! is this so ?

I don't believe this is true. In fact, some Haiku are so cryptic that they require titles to know what they are describing.

I always title my poems -- it's like not naming a kid, otherwise, at least to me.

Titles for me tend to arrive immediately after the first decent draft of the poem is done, and are frequently cryptically descriptive or tangential to the obvious content of a poem. It's an organic process, and I can't add a lot more than that about it.

Lordfuznut: A chapbook is a book of poetry, usually self produced on 8.5"x11" paper. It's typically shorter than most books, hence the abbreviation of "chapter book".

When I pick a title, it's usually the main theme or phrase in the poem. If you see a word or phrase becoming a pattern, the title can come from that very easily. Alternatively, you can give the poem a context with a title and reveal what the piece is really about ("Why I don't go to the movies").

In a pinch, the first line is good as well.

If it's a series, you can either go in some thematic progression of the series, or number them (Like Morris Stegosaurus's Big Man series or Magic Cactus series).

-Jesster