Poet-slash-evil genius Jonah Winter and your guest blogger [Dan Nester] spent an afternoon in Pittsburgh not too long ago, talking of our lack of faith in Jesus Christ as our personal savior as well as making fun of poetry book titles. They all seemed so aggressively portentous, imbued with such fawning obsequiousness. To exorcise ourselves of the real-life titles we were mentioning, titles that shall not be mentioned here, we played a word association game wherein either Jonah or myself would think of the second word of a two-word poetry book title, which would after after whatever the other participant named as the first.
So, for example, Jonah would say “Imprimateured,” while I kept in mind the second word for the title, “Meanderings,” thus giving us a title ready for someone’s poetry manuscript, Imprimateured Meanderings. (That’s Jonah in full evil genius mode pictured up on your left, reading at UMaine’s reading series awhile back; do check out his books, the very un-portentously, unobsequiously named Maine and Amnesia.)
Sometimes we would even think of the press one of our proposed books titles might be associated. TransDarkness would fit right beside those titles published at the experimental Ahsahta Press, for example, while Tremulous Beaver might be more feasible for, say, Knopf.
Without further ado, here’s our list. Got any others? Add them to the Comments box.
The Orchid Sac
Lunar Guest
Concrete Pedigree
Beviled Desires
Standard Flow
Leftward Thwartings
Modified Rapture
Tremulous Beaver
Uninformed Highwayman
TransDarkness
Uninformed Tomorrowings
Imprimateured Meanderings
Sluiced Regret
The Sentinel Awakes
In situ, Storms
Alarm Morningwood
Darling; Wandering
Streaked Pugnaciousness
Variegated Cock
Woman House
Descartes’ Pancakes
Fugitive Contraband
Entering Beaver
Airport Beaver
Damage Thruway
Matchstick Haven
Unsublettable You
Earning, Toward
The Felt Apogee
Technical Vulva
Tree Entrance
Veinous Miriam
Unvisited Stickerbush
Polished Lendings
Stiff Flowering
Penelope’s Nubbin
from the archive; first posted May 30, 2008.
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Author: Moira Egan
