What makes a good title?

Liszt’s compositions tend to have descriptive titles – ‘Wild Chase’; ‘Dreams of Love’ – whereas Chopin avoided titles. Thomas Wentworth Higginson wished titles on Emily Dickinson’s poems, opposed by his fellow editor Mabel Loomis Todd. They didn’t stick. Maybe this is why Dickinson is acclaimed but unread. ‘I heard a Fly buzz’ is easier to remember than 465. We can express this truth by quoting Dickens on the Bible in Little Dorrit: ‘such hiccupping reference as 2 Ep. Thess. C. iii, v. 6 & 7.’ Or by remembering how often we forget our several PINs.

Titles are important. Titles are useful. For poets, titles can be a resource, a way of off-loading information, a handy press release before the actual poem. ‘Flying to Belfast, 1977’ orientates the reader. So does Frank O’Hara’s ‘The Day Lady Died’. Auden’s ‘A.E. Housman’, ‘Rimbaud’ and ‘At the Grave of Henry James’ are functional, time-saving and deceptively laconic.

And titles are intriguing. They pique the reader’s interest. Here are some good titles: When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Delta of Venus, True at First Light, Death in the Afternoon, ‘For Esmé – with Love and Squalor’, ‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish’. The Hemingway titles are probably the best things about the books.

Short titles are less risky but less effective. My daughter’s play, Consent, survived the disaffected comment of her playwright brother: ‘It sounds like a brand of cigarette. Twenty Consent, please.’

In 1979, I was in the George pub outside the BBC with Seamus Heaney. It was the first time we had met. We were discussing titles. He liked A Martian Sends a Postcard Home as a title. He said he was getting together a book of reviews and lectures (which later became Preoccupations).