Jazz Keys
A few weeks ago Abigail was talking about titles for poems. Titles always feel a bit mysterious to me. Sometimes the right title will present itself, and I’ll know pretty quickly that it’s a good fit. And then other times….
Recently, Certain Age published a little poem of mine. If you click through, you can even hear me fumble with my phone as I recorded the poem for you!
This poem’s gone through a few different titles. And frankly, in the version that was published, the numerals feel a little awkward. In an earlier version, the poem was called “Love at Midlife.” I really like that title but snatched “midlife” to use in the title of another poem.
Here’s that earlier version of the poem via Jazz Keys, a fun program that composes music as you type.
Here’s a bit from the end of Macbeth that I’m memorizing with a group of teenagers. They loved my melodic typos!
Go play with Jazz Keys already. And leave a link to one of your creations in the comments!
Thank you for introducing me to jazz keys. And thank you for keeping the conversation about titles going. There is an organic fluidity to poems sharing titles, swapping titles, taking turns with them... the way you saved the word "midlife" for a different poem reminded me of the way my sisters and I used to borrow from each other's closets growing up. There's something comforting about this image: the body of our poems can dip in and out of each poem's sensibilities and phrases until each one is clothed and crowned.
What a lovely poem. As a moon-lover, I heartily approve.
Titles are the hardest things. I spent hours today looking for an old blog post I want to repost here. I could not for the life of me remember the title or any useful keywords. Eventually we found it, but it was quite a hunt. If it had an intuitive title that would have helped, but no, I had to have given it an interesting and creative title!