Hypertext Magazine asked Jessica Bell, author of A Tide Should Be Able to Rise Despite Its Moon, “Why are all your poems in this collection all untitled?”
By Jessica Bell
Believe it or not, I actually started this collection with all the titles written before most of the poems. The initial concept (and working title) was ζωή (Life in Greek.) And all the poems had titles such as Distraction, Love, Escape, Independence, Alienation, Displacement, Awareness, etc. I wanted it to be a book of noun ‘definitions’ that represented different feelings we need to experience in order to become well-rounded, open-minded, compassionate human beings, starting from childhood. I wanted readers’ perceptions of those nouns to change by the time they reached the ends of the poems. But when I finished the book, I realized that all the titles gave away the climax of the poems. And the order in which I had them wasn’t having the effect I had hoped for. With these titles, the poems were read before they were read!
I was a little bummed that my ‘cleverness’ wasn’t so clever after all, and scrapped all the titles. I had this idea to put the titles in the back of the book and prompt readers to match them with the poems. Silly. I didn’t want the book to be a high school English text book either. So, I did away with the titles all together, printed out all the poems, and laid them on my floor. As I scanned them, I realized that this book had the potential to be an emotional journey that followed a loose arc, and that if I nailed the order, my original concept would be understood anyway. They had to remain untitled, so that each poem could flow into one another. For example, the last lines of the first poem in the book, which was originally entitled, Reincarnation, are:
They dreamed he would live in the colours
of a rainbow, and smile.
The boy looks up.
The clouds part.
Then the first lines of the second poem are:
His eyes grew wet
when we met on the couch for dinner.
It could be the same boy from the first poem, reincarnated on my couch as my son. Once I realized that they all seamlessly linked up like this, I reordered them pretty quickly. It was just meant to be. But in order to do this I had to cut a poem. I killed a darling, but including it would have destroyed the flow of the tide. Funny … the original title of that poem was Dissidence.
Jessica Bell is a multi-award-winning author/poet and singer-songwriter who was born in Melbourne, Australia. In addition to having published a memoir, five novels, four poetry collections, and numerous craft books on writing and publishing, she is also the Publisher of Vine Leaves Press, and a highly sought-after book cover designer. She currently resides in Athens, Greece, with her partner and son, and a pile of dishes that still don’t know how to wash themselves despite her consistently teaching by example.
For more information visit: iamjessicabell.com