Title
Quick answer: A poem's title is its first line of contact: doorway, frame and sometimes twist. How poem titles work, common strategies, and how to choose a strong one.
A title is the name a poem wears, and it is the first line of the poem in every way that matters: the reader meets it before anything else, and it frames how every subsequent line is understood. A good title can orient, intrigue, add a layer of irony, or plant information the poem itself withholds. A lazy one wastes the single most privileged position in the text.
Poets underrate titles because they come last in drafting and feel like packaging. Editors and judges read them the other way round: the title is evidence of how awake the poet was. Among a hundred poems called 'Grief' or 'Love', the one titled 'What the Undertaker Kept' gets read with different attention, and earns it before its first line.
What a Title Can Do
Titles have jobs, and knowing the menu helps you choose.
Where You Will See It Done Well
Study titles the way you study endings. Some do heavy narrative lifting: the full title of Frank O'Hara's poem about the day Billie Holiday died, or James Wright's famous long title placing him in a hammock on a named farm in Minnesota, delivers setting so the poem can spend itself elsewhere. Emily Dickinson left her poems untitled, which is why we cite them by first lines, itself a lesson in how titles function. Wallace Stevens used titles as riddling counterpoint, sometimes only obliquely touching the poem, making the gap part of the meaning.
Choosing Yours
Draft several titles for every finished poem, then test each against three questions. Does it repeat what the poem already says? Cut it; a title should add, not echo. Does it give away the ending? Move the revelation. Does it make a reader want the first line? Keep the shortlist and choose the one that changes the poem most interestingly. A workable trick is to lift a phrase from the middle of the poem and promote it, then delete it from the body so nothing repeats. Whatever you pick, never leave a contest entry called 'Untitled' if rules allow otherwise; you are handing back the poem's best free real estate.
What poets can take from this
- Write five candidate titles for every poem before choosing.
- Never let the title merely repeat the poem's first or last line.
- Use the title to carry facts the poem is too proud to state: dates, places, names.
- Try a mid-poem phrase as title, then remove it from the body.
- Read title and first line together aloud; they should strike a spark.
Try it yourself
Take a finished poem and give it three different titles: one that orients with time and place, one that adds a fact the poem never mentions, and one that runs into the first line as its grammatical start. Notice how each title changes the poem's meaning, and keep the boldest.
Questions
Can a poem be untitled?
Yes, and Dickinson's whole body of work manages without titles. But in contemporary publishing and contests, an untitled poem surrenders its most visible position. Choose untitled as a deliberate effect, not a shrug.
Should the title explain the poem?
No, it should add to it. A title that summarises the poem flattens the reading, while one that supplies context, tension or an extra fact makes the poem larger. Aim for a title the poem needs, not one it already contains.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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