naming the beast: more on titles and taxonomy

 

I was just working on a blog post for Patreon on titling your work, and while I reigned it in to be more informational and practical, it had me thinking of all the ways I've titled works, both individually and as collections. While I have very little problem coming up with book titles (well, barring one recent project I will get to in a minute) individual poems have always been rough for me. It may in fact be why I rarely title the smaller bits and pieces of larger projects, instead leaving them without titles or adding numbers/letters and other typographical elements to denote separate pieces. 

It wasn't always this way, and my first book, THE FEVER ALMANAC is an excellent example of my early poet days, when I titled individual pieces much more frequently.  I was pretty good at it, and usually the title was something I sussed out of the poem as I drafted it, or it was a word or phrase I had scribbled down in a notebook. The real challenge was the overall collection, which had many titles and versions in those couple of years I was pulling together that first full-length and submitting it. In the fall of 2003, it was titled "Almanac", and was arranged by seasons, Later, it merged with a second manuscript of poems written between 2004-2005 I was calling "The Fever Poems."  During that summer of revision, right before the combined version that was eventually accepted, I mended the two titles together and it stuck.

My second book, IN THE BIRD MUSEUM, was not always called that. When I queried and sent the book to Dusie Press, it was still called "Instabilities, " after another one of the poems. It was a title that reflected the ideas of knowledge and transgression well. My editor suggested I change it to "In the Bird Museum" which was the title of another one of the poems and I was amenable to the change.

GIRL SHOW, however, was always GIRL SHOW, even before I had written a single poem. I pulled it from a non-fiction historical book I had on my desk in the library with the same title that was all about women sideshow performers. When I wrote the first poem, this was its title and the guiding force behind the book as it took shape over the next couple of years, even enduring my MFA, where I completed the manuscript as my thesis project. The title of my next book, THE SHARED PROPERTIES OF WATER AND STARS, if I remember correctly, came from something scribbled in my notebook. At the time an editor requested to see the manuscript in the fall of 2012, I vaguely remember slapping the title on it and seeing if they thought it worked. When the book came out less than a year later, that was the title. 

At some point in the middle of writing MAJOR CHARACTERS IN MINOR FILMS, which took almost 10 years that the poems span, the title came to me as a perfect encapsulation of a book that brought together a number of different things, including films, fame, creativity, and identity.  By the time I submitted it the first time (it was accepted pretty quickly) this was the name it was going by. Ditto with SALVAGE, which had stuck in my head as a perfect big tent for poems about mermaids that littered it. LITTLE APOCALYPSE came after the poems were finished, during which I had just been calling it my apocalyptic manuscript whenever I read the poems out loud at readings. 

SEX & VIOLENCE was another one where, sometime in the middle of finishing the book, the title came to me as a perfect umbrella for poems about actual horror movie violence, emotional violence (I'm thinking of the Plath centos specifically) as well as #metoo era concerns and questions. FEED was, of course, about mothering and being a daughter, while DARK COUNTRY was filled with midwest gothicism,  ANIMAL, VEGETABLE. MONSTER was a title I had come up with originally for a library cryptid event but liked enough to re-use it on a book (this was similar to my zine project, TECHNOGROTESQUE, which was slated to be a semester focus topic that never happened b/c I left in early 2022. AUTOMAGIC was a word we used to jokingly throw around on the Etsy forums. Something which seems mysterious and magical, but happens automatically without effort.  

In the weeks right before covid lockdowns, I wrote down the word COLLAPSOLOGIES on a slip of paper and tucked it inside a notebook (inspired if I remember correctly, by an article that discussed the science of how buildings fall). That summer, I encountered the scrap again and immediately used it as the working title for the book I was writing about the pandemic era. In the early months of writing GRANATA in 2023, I came across the dual meaning of the word, as both the questionable fruit and the Italian word for grenade. I never considered anything else. RUINPORN was inspired by some articles I was writing on the beauty of crumbling dilapitated homes. WILD(ISH) by the themes of nature and society as constructs that the book is rubbing against. CLOVEN, which reflects the ideas of monstrosity and transformation. My most recent titling debacle happened with EXOTICA, which I originally titled CARNIVAL GAMES, but it didn't seem...I don't know...sexy enough. EXOTICA was actually the title of a single poem in GIRL SHOW, which seemed fitting and reflected what I was going for with this sibling book. 

There are, of course, more projects in the wings, both titled and untitled. I have the title for the next collection (likely coming mid-next year) that was inspired by a T. Swift lyric in her last album, MARRY| KISS | KILL . My most recent standalone book manuscript, AMERICAN CYCLORAMA, was inspired by an article I wrote on cycloramas and dioramas a couple years back. And there are more scribbled in my notebook as potential projects that just need the poems to happen or unfinished projects I hope complete at some point, like POSTCARDS FROM THE BLUE SWALLOW MOTEL and THE MIDNIGHT GARDEN (which you can get a peak at over on Patreon as a subscriber. ) 

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