[R. S. Gwynn]

Looking at the titles of the poems posted now in Metrical Poetry, only a couple inspire me to read the poem. Have we ever had a discussion of the do's and don't's of titling poems?

[Susan McLean]

Sam, are you talking about the actual titles of the poems or the placeholder titles that appear on the thread's front page? A lot of poets have started using placeholder titles to make it harder for bots to get hold of the actual titles.

Susan

[Jim Moonan]

.
—But good question in any event, Sam. I will in fact skip over a poem (not here, but elsewhere) if the title doesn't attract me.
As for thread titles being different from the poem titles for purposes of alluding bots, I’d love to know if anyone has ever had an issue in that regard.

I love titles.
.

[Michael Cantor]

I have the same reaction as Jim regarding eluding bots. Has anybody actually had a problem with this, or is it a horror story invented to scare the children? I feel that the title is an important part of the poem, and to ignore it because you heard from somebody who had it on good authority from somebody else that there were stealth devices searching our poem names so that we could never, ever publish in Poetry takes away from the poem.

Has anybody actually encountered this personally?

[Jesse Anger]

Titles are important, very important even. That said, in the context of the sphere there is no way to know if the title fits the piece because you can't see both the title and poem at once via the current interface. You may see a title like: hallucinatory serengeti, and then click it to find a bland poem abt first love. Or a worn title, like fall leaves, and yet, because of the poem it works perfectly.

And yeah, bots are a thing, but if a journal passes on your piece because it appeared here fuck them anyway...

J

[W T Clark]

Originally Posted by Jesse Anger

And yeah, bots are a thing, but if a journal passes on your piece because it appeared here fuck them anyway...

J

"Amen" to that.

On titles more generally, the greatest poet to write titles seems to me Wallace Stevens, whose titles are poems in themselves: "A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts" "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon" "The Emperor of Ice-cream". But again one of the greatest poets, Emily Dickinson, saw no need for them. If the first line is strong, it can itself be title enough.

[W T Clark]

I'm struggling to understand how it "takes away from the poem". The thread title will not bear the poem's title; but if you click on the thread and move to the poem's body, you will learn the "actual" title. Nothing in that scenario seems to have been taken from the poem; maybe some aesthetic pleasure has been taken away from viewing a forum page, at the worst.

[Orwn Acra]

The Flower Called Nowhere
How to Play Your Internal Organs Overnight
Escape Pod (From the World of Medical Observations)
The Long Hair of Death
Lo Boob Oscillator
Get a Shot of the Refrigerator
International Coloring Contest
You Used to Call Me Sadness
I Was a Sunny Rainphase
The Noise of Carpet
Ticker-tape of the Unconscious
John Cage Bubblegum
Exploding Head Movie
The Man With 100 Cells
Nihilist Assault Group
Pack Yr Romantic Mind
Italian Shoes Continuum
Prisoner of Mars
Free Witch and the No-Bra Queen
The Brush Descends the Length
Self-Portrait with "Electric Brain"
Freestyle Dumpling
Fluorescences
Oscillons from the Anti-Sun
Rose, My Rocket Brain!
Refractions in the Plastic Pulse
Emperor Tomato Ketchup
Excursions into "Oh, A-Oh"
Animal or Vegetable (A Wonderful Wooden Reason...)
Rainbo Conversation
Come and Play in the Milky Night

[Orwn Acra]

(acknowledging my Masters)

[Allen Tice]

Those venues that won’t accept online pre-published work: Poetry, the Atlantic, and so on, are not going tell you why you have been rejected. Period. How much originality does it take to invent an interesting dummy title and some blanked-out header lines that foil a bot? To go on and on for years demanding evidence to show that bots don’t kill your chances with the big name venues is exactly like denying climate change: rigid and actually dumb, and you do know better. I repeat, how much work is it to make an interesting or at least grabby or weird cover title? The work of a minute. C’mon, big guy, you know I’m right. Example: I would title this thread “Tiny Tim Tiptoes To Entitlement.” There, that took less effort than a microwaved coffee. The world was flat, but it isn’t any more.