Get Great Titles from Shakespeare, Yeats, and Paul Simon

Here’s a fun way to get titles. You can use this method to title a piece you’ve already written, or you can use the titles as prompts and re-title later if you write something that doesn’t fit.

Titles from Poems: The Method

1. Find the text of a song or poem you like. Prose doesn’t usually work, but you might have luck with a very dense and image-rich block of prose, such as something by Dylan Thomas. If you can’t think of a text you want to use, just grab anything by Shakespeare.
2. Look through the text and mark the interesting phrases. (This means phrases you like, phrases that sound like titles, phrases that stand out for no apparent reason, or phrases that give you ideas.)
3. Pick one of the phrases and use it for a title. (Or be inspired in some other way, follow your inspiration, and come back to the titles later.)

Example: The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I’ll do an example with “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by W.B. Yeats. Phrases I think could make good titles are marked like this. You will probably like different phrases, which shows what a good method this is.  (Note: Lately I am interested in longer, weirder titles such as James Tiptree, Jr.’s  “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side,” which comes from John Keats’ poem “La Belle Dame sans Merci“.)

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
By W.B. Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Do you like any of those? Want to go through this poem yourself? Or, better yet, how about trying this method with a poem or song you love?

If you come up with a few titles you like, please post them in the comments below! (Don’t post an entire poem unless you own the rights or it is in the public domain.)