History

This house isn't there any more. The lakeside farm in Northern Michigan has been turned into a stalled housing development called Eagle Beach. When I began photographing this home place every year, the barn was gone; only the cement silo still stood. Now the house has been removed, too. I wonder what kind of pictures I can take when we get back this year?

History

     Structure and sense that dreams from the corners of a 
room. . . .
     Table edges that remind us of tensions drawn from exacting boundaries, falling finally up from the patterns of a 
rug. . . .
     Those drapes hanging by that window draped like
classical stone, shifting with subtle compliance to an
atmosphere softly breathing from a distant meadow. . . .

     Above us is a monstrous artifact of clouds that've lain
together for centuries like sleeping swine. . . .

     The drift . . . .

Russell Edson from The Rooster's Wife, 
BOA editions, 2005, page 14.

Notice how the title makes this poem much more immediately accessible to the reader. Think about the title of each one of your poems: what effect does each one have on the apprehension of the poem? Do you like that, or would you prefer to change it??