OneTaskBy Tim King · Updated
Poem Title Generator
Titles for Lyric, Elegy, Ode, Sonnet, Prose Poem and Nature Poetry
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How the Poem Title Generator works
Use this poem title generator to fill a shortlist in seconds. Generate poem titles in the shapes real poems use: Ode to a Kettle and Elegy for the Orchard as an ode or elegy, On Leaving and After Folding Laundry as an On title, Sonnet XIV and Poem 23 as a numbered form, What the River Kept as a sentence, Self-Portrait as a Lantern as a self-portrait, To My Daughter and For My Father, Who Left as an address, and Aubade with Rain and Litany of Small Things as a form plus a thing. Pick a mood, choose a shape and generate up to a hundred.
Poem title generator: the patterns behind each name
A poem's title is the first line the reader sees and often the only clue to what the poem is doing, so contemporary poetry has settled into a handful of shapes that name the poem's form, its addressee or its occasion, which is why the Mood select changes the nouns and the Shape select changes the grammar. The ode-and-elegy form, Ode to a Kettle, Elegy for the Orchard, Lament for the Heron, Ode to Silence, is the oldest, the classical forms of praise and mourning, and the modern turn is to apply them to something small and domestic, a kettle, a coat, a bus, which is why the Domestic and Urban moods sound so contemporary in this shape. The On form, On Leaving, On Not Sleeping, After Folding Laundry, Before Turning Forty, is the essay-poem, a gerund that names the poem's occasion, and it is the shape of the meditative lyric from Montaigne's essay titles onward. The numbered form, Sonnet XIV, Poem 23, Canto VII, Elegy IX, is the sequence, a title that tells you the poem is one of many and refuses to say more, and a numbered title in a chapbook contents page makes the whole book read as a project. The sentence form, What the River Kept, What the Photograph Knows, Where the Heron Sleeps, When the Clock Forgot, is the most common shape in magazines now, a relative clause that promises the poem will answer it and usually does not. The Self-Portrait form, Self-Portrait as a Lantern, Self-Portrait with Kettle, Self-Portrait in Fog, is the shape the last two decades made their own, borrowed from painting, in which the poet describes themselves as an object or in a setting, and Portrait of My Father as a Heron is its family variant. The address form, To My Daughter, For My Father, Who Left, Letter to a Stranger, To the Wren, is the apostrophe, the poem that speaks to someone, and the comma-and-who variant, For My Mother, Who Forgot, is a whole contemporary sub-shape. And the form-with-a-thing shape, Aubade with Rain, Nocturne with Streetlight, Pastoral with Carpark, Psalm for the Sleepless, Litany of Losses, names the poem by its classical form and then adds the one modern object that undercuts it, which is the shape most likely to be found in a current literary magazine.
The nouns are ordinary English and the forms are the public vocabulary of poetry, so a result is a new combination rather than a real poem by design, though poem titles are shared constantly, On Leaving and Elegy for My Father have each been used by dozens of poets, and titles are not copyrighted, so a coincidence is normal and expected. A poem title is also set above a poem in the same type, so the shapes here are one to six words, and the numbered forms are plain.
For the collection the poems go in, the Book title page; for a lyric, the Song title page; for the poet's pen name, the Pen name page in the People section; for a prose piece, the Story title page; for the story the poem sits in, the Fantasy and Fiction section; and for the magazine, the Business section.
FAQ
What makes a good poem title?
One that adds something the first line does not: the occasion, On Leaving; the addressee, To My Daughter; the form, Aubade with Rain; or a frame, Self-Portrait as a Lantern. A title that repeats the first line wastes the reader's first look, and a title that explains the poem removes the reason to read it. The sentence shape, What the River Kept, works because it asks a question the poem is the answer to.
Should a poem have a title at all?
Most published poems do, and magazines and contents pages need one. Untitled, a number, Poem 23, or a first line in brackets are the ways to refuse, and the numbered form here gives you the sequence version. A short lyric can carry no title in a collection; a poem sent to a magazine almost always needs one.
What is an aubade, a nocturne or a litany?
Classical forms that name a poem's occasion rather than its metre: an aubade is a dawn poem, usually a parting; a nocturne a night poem; a pastoral a countryside poem; a psalm a song of praise or complaint; a litany a repeated list. The form-with-a-thing shape pairs one of them with a modern object, Aubade with Rain, Pastoral with Carpark, which is a current magazine convention.
Can two poems have the same title?
Constantly. Titles are not copyrighted and the common shapes are shared by many poets; there are dozens of poems called On Leaving and Elegy for My Father. A distinctive title helps a poem be found and remembered, which is what the Self-Portrait and form-with-a-thing shapes do, but a coincidence is normal and no one minds.
Can I use these names for fiction or test data?
Yes. The words are ordinary English and the forms are the public vocabulary of poetry, so the titles belong to no one, and coincidence with a real poem is expected and harmless. For a fictional poet's collected works, a chapbook contents page, a workshop prompt list, a literary magazine mock-up or a sample reading list, use them freely.
See also: all Places & Things tools, People, Fantasy & RPG, Sci-fi, Culture & Language, Online & Social, Business & Brand.
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