TELLTALE TITLES
How much time and thought do you devote to coming up with just-the-right title for your story, poem or article? If you take writing seriously, the answer is probably: as long as it takes to nail it — which could be almost no time at all, if it comes to you in a flash — or, more time than a less intense writer is willing to allot.
Ernest Hemingway, for one, evidently wasn’t the latter type. Case in point: in writing his definitive Spanish Civil War novel, he didn’t settle for less than a killer title that would encapsulate ‘the moral of the story,’ eventually finding it in this passage from a 1624 work by the poet John Donne: “Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
As a writer of (mostly) humorous poems and posts, I’m inclined to go for witty and/or wordplay titles. Many times, the title to a particular piece all but suggests itself, but more often, no such luck, and I’m stuck — until eventually (as with the title of this post) a eureka moment rewards my resolve….or a poem resists my labeling efforts, and I just settle for:
UNTITLED
This poem’s title is Untitled —
Not because it is untitled,
But because I am entitled
To entitle it Untitled.
If I’d not titled it Untitled,
It would truly be untitled….
Which would make it unentitled
To the title of Untitled.
So it is vital, if untitled,
Not to title it Untitled,
And to leave that title idled,
As a title is entitled.
Moving on, suppose we try a title quiz based on the Papa Hemingway model (sorry, those of you who’d prefer the mistermuse model). Here are five passages from classic original works from which later authors lifted titles for their novels. Can you name the five later works and pin each tale on its author (ten answers total)? If you name all ten correctly, you win the title (with apologies to Cervantes) of Donkeyote Of All You Survey.
PASSAGES FROM ORIGINAL WORKS:
Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree/Damned from here to Eternity/God ha’ mercy on such as we/Ba! Yah! Bah! –Rudyard Kipling
The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft a-gley/An’ lea’e us naught but grief an’ pain/For promised joy! –Robert Burns
By the pricking of my thumbs,/Something wicked this way comes. –Wm. Shakespeare
Come my tan-faced children/Follow well in order, get your weapons ready/Have you your pistols? Have you your sharp-edged axes?/Pioneers! O pioneers! –Walt Whitman
No Place so Sacred from such Fops is barr’d,/Nor is Paul’s Church more safe than Paul’s Churchyard./Nay, fly to altars; there they’ll talk you dead/For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread. –Alexander Pope
TITLES (WITH AUTHORS) FROM ABOVE PREVIOUS WORKS:
FROM HERE TO ETERNITY –James Jones
OF MICE AND MEN –John Steinbeck
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES –Ray Bradbury
O PIONEERS! –Willa Cather
WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD –E.M. Forster
How many of the ten titles/authors did you get? That last title, parenthetically, became part of Johnny Mercer’s lyrics to this 1940 hit song composed by Rube Bloom:
And now I fear I must tread on out….before something wicked this way comes.
Cynthia Jobin 10:29 am on June 15, 2016 Permalink |
If there were an award entitled “The Best Poem about Title-ing An Untitled Poem” you certainly would be entitled to it. I recall a creative writing teacher who was a stickler about titles; she said leaving a poem untitled was lazy and a refusal to finish your poem properly. In the history of Literature it seems even the use of Numbers—Sonnet 24—has been acceptable, and often the first line or phrase of a poem is used as its title—-“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night….”.
I liked the quiz. Pour moi it was a piece of cake. Just this past month I used a line from a Shakespeare sonnet for one of my titles: “Love’s Not Time’s Fool.” Thanks for an enjoyable post!
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mistermuse 11:21 am on June 15, 2016 Permalink |
Thank you, Cynthia. I believe the exception to the ‘poems must be titled rule’ is the limerick, which should never be titled (if one were to follow the rules, which apparently exist to curtail my fun, so I have occasionally titled a few of mine).
Congrats on getting 100% on the quiz. I hereby award you the title (in deference to your gender) of DONNA-KEYOTE OF ALL YOU SURVEY! 🙂
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Cynthia Jobin 11:22 am on June 15, 2016 Permalink
I shall try to prove worthy of it. 🙂
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Don Frankel 5:14 pm on June 15, 2016 Permalink |
I got all the titles but sad to say did not know the last three authors off the top of my head. I guess I get a 70. But of course I knew the song.
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mistermuse 9:05 pm on June 15, 2016 Permalink |
Don, you know how much I dig great old songs, so I’m giving you 30 bonus points for knowing FOOLS RUSH IN (WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD). That brings your score up to 100, which wins you the DON(FRANKEL)KEYOTE OF ALL YOU SURVEY AWARD….and well deserved, I might add!
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arekhill1 10:32 am on June 16, 2016 Permalink |
AUTO REPLY: I’m on vacation. Any quizzes will be taken when I get back to my office.
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mistermuse 11:07 am on June 16, 2016 Permalink |
I auto wish you a great vacation, but no doubt you’re having one anyway. Safe trip home.
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inesephoto 5:55 pm on June 16, 2016 Permalink |
Love your poem 🙂
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D. Wallace Peach 11:20 pm on June 17, 2016 Permalink |
I got the titles but didn’t know all the authors. This was really interesting. Your poem made me laugh. 🙂
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mistermuse 7:43 am on June 18, 2016 Permalink |
Thank you both. Of all the poems I’ve written, I must admit that’s one of my favorites.
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JosieHolford 5:19 pm on November 5, 2020 Permalink |
I got all but the Rudyard Kipling.
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mistermuse 6:21 pm on November 5, 2020 Permalink |
Well done, Josie. I had forgotten about this June 2016 post, so (if I do say so myself) title me PLEASED to ‘re-discover’ it, thanks to you.
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