I have quite often written poems with titles like “Kangaroo sonnet,” “Kookaburra” or “Black Swan”. Since I am a poet, it is quite legitimate to ask why on earth I would choose such bland titles for my poems. Why don’t I come up with headings that buzz with creativity and excitement? Why not bring all my poetic gifts to bear so that the title itself works a sort of word-magic on the reader? Actually, there’s a method to my madness. These “bland” poem titles are doing a job that no “creative” alternatives could really do. In fact, they are working a word-magic on the reader, though the enchantment is of a very ordinary everyday kind.
These titles orient a reader. They immediately inform a reader what subject—out of billions of possible subjects on planet earth—the poem is going to play with. Notice, for example, what happens if I call a poem simply “Black Swan”. Your brain immediately does something. It focuses in on what it already knows about a “black swan”. It begins to form an image of an Australian swan (they’re the black ones) perhaps floating on a lake, perhaps curving its neck in classic swan style.
Thus, even before the poem has properly started, the poet has got you. He or she has caused you to think of the one subject on earth that the poem is about. This not only saves a lot of words (for the poet doesn’t have to describe the subject at length) but it also means the poet can immediately get down to the task at hand, which is playing poetically with the subject in their idiosyncratic way. These dead boring poem titles thus help the reader and the poet meet half way. The reader brings all their prior knowledge of the subject to their reading, and the poet launches out from this starting point without having to rehash the obvious. Instead the poet creates (hopefully) a new angle on the subject—perhaps many new angles—that the reader has never encountered before.
By way of example, you might like to read the poem below which carries the title “Kangaroo sonnet”. If you’re like most readers who hear this title, your mind will already be starting to close in on the topic of “kangaroos”. You’ve probably seen kangaroos at the zoo, or even (if you live in or have visited Australia) in the wild. Now that you are thinking about kangaroos, in fact, these creatures are probably getting ready to hop through the air in your mind already … which is precisely what I intended! You’re already half there.
KANGAROO SONNET
They are—at first—unseen, just like statues
and as grey-brown as the eucalypt trunks.
But then they spring into action, these ’roos
rousing the forest with their thumps and thunks.
Most of their movement is flight; they barely
touch ground—instead they are bouncing, bounding
between trees, through blank intervals of air:
leaves fly—dust dances—amidst the pounding.
And then the action telescopes away
into the distance. The great disturbance
recedes like a train on a lazy day
and the bush unbends from its perturbance.
There is nothing left but some broken sticks
and some leaves, swinging, from those giant kicks.
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