Ash Bowen's poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Blackbird, and Black Warrior Review, among other publications. He lives and works in Texarkana, AR.
Jennifer Jabaily's poetry has appeared in Mannequin Envy and Fickle Muses. She's a second-year MFA student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
Ashley Anna McHugh is a third-year MFA student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Measure, DIAGRAM and Memorious as well as other publications.
Johnathon Williams's poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2009, the Pebble Lake Review, and Unsplendid. He lives in Fayetteville, AR, with his wife and daughters.
I’ve Got A Hamster Stuck In My Craw
Intricate Snoozing
Diaphanous Succubus
Book No One Will Read and Other Whinings
My Mom Works at Wal-Mart, Bitch
Theory Goggles and Beer Goggles make Marjorie Perloff Look Like One Sexy Ho
The Onion Inside My Heart Will Make You Cry If You Cut It
Beaver Cycle
Microphone for Achilles or Why I Am Not A Rockstar
That Roastbeef Sandwich Hit The Spot, Son!_
Some people insist every poem needs its own title, as if you were naming a baby. Personally I don’t mind if a poem goes around as “Untitled,” although, of course, a title lets the poet determine how the poem is identified. Don’t title it and you run the risk of readers coming up with something like “the poem with sleet in it,” or “the dead baby poem.” Who wants that? Luckily, default will usually kick in and the poem will be identified by its first line, à la e.e. cummings. This can be a good thing.
On the other side are poets who use the same title over and over, like Louise Glück in Wild Iris. This makes identifying the poem even harder than leaving it untitled. There’s “Matins page 2,” “Matins page 3,” page 12, 13, 25, etc. Hey, they were all good, but which one are we talking about?
In my book, anything would be preferable to calling a poem “Poem.” As if there were only one!
There’s a poet I know who hates long titles. I admit this can come off as gimmicky, but usually I find it a draw. A poem called “Poem in Which the Clairvoyant Gives In and Sells Her Internal Organs to Buy the Lycra-Like Trampoline” would pique my interest more than “Snow.” (At least initially.) The danger here is the reader enters with big expectations. If the poem is a let-down, an extraordinary title won’t save it. It will only make the let-down worse.
I thought such long titles were rare but a recent cull of Verse Daily turns up a bunch of them. If any of these intrigue you, you can read them there, and see if the poems deliver.