June 8th, 2010 / 2:07 pm
Snippets

What is your favorite story or poem title? I like “Upstairs, Mona Bayed for Dong.”

75 Comments

  1. jereme

      “Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer.”

  2. jereme

      “Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer.”

  3. jereme

      close second is “NEANDERTHAL CLITORIS” by sam pink.

  4. jereme

      close second is “NEANDERTHAL CLITORIS” by sam pink.

  5. gavin pate

      “Girl With Curious Hair” always stuck it to me, but just lately, I read “The Dickmare” and I want desperately to use that phrase every chance I get. And “Upstairs, Mona Bayed for Dong,” that story, I just kept it at arm’s length for so long, read the collection around it, for some reason terrified what it might be.

  6. gavin pate

      “Girl With Curious Hair” always stuck it to me, but just lately, I read “The Dickmare” and I want desperately to use that phrase every chance I get. And “Upstairs, Mona Bayed for Dong,” that story, I just kept it at arm’s length for so long, read the collection around it, for some reason terrified what it might be.

  7. Drew

      “Midnight and I’m Not Famous Yet” He was killer for titles.

  8. Drew

      “Midnight and I’m Not Famous Yet” He was killer for titles.

  9. Eric Anderson

      That’s tough… maybe “Things To Do With Naphtha” by Swenson.

  10. Eric Anderson

      That’s tough… maybe “Things To Do With Naphtha” by Swenson.

  11. Caketrain

      “Aisle Idle, Ride Down Rosedale” by Stevie Davis is a nice one. Stevie titles are always nice, actually.

  12. Jake Zucker

      Shirley Jackson’s “One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts” or Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”

  13. Lincoln

      The Temptation to Exist

      Me and Miss Mandible

  14. Andrew Zornoza

      I like these:

      Harlan Ellison: “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman”
      PK Dick: “A Scanner Darkly”
      Herman Melville: “Moby-Dick”
      Ashbery: “The Instruction Manual” and “Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape”
      Kathy Acker: “Blood and Guts in High School”

  15. Matt Cozart

      The Dong with a Luminous Nose — Edward Lear

  16. Seth

      Stanley Crawford’s Some Instructions to My Wife Concerning the Upkeep of the House and Marriage and to My Son and Daughter Concerning the Conduct of Their Childhood.

  17. rk

      Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan–JG Ballard

      Examination at the Womb-door–Ted Hughes

  18. alan

      So far it seems like people like longer titles best. All but three of those mentioned above are four words or more.

      Charles Willeford had a theory that longer titles are better because they draw the reader in by forcing him or her to read more of your words up front.

  19. dan

      not a favorite (i can’t think of one right now), but i kind of like when poems are simply titled “Poem” because to me it suggests that the poem itself is a thing that is so great that it doesn’t require a name.

      though, i know a lot of people would call that laziness.

  20. michael

      These would have to go to Graham Foust– “The Only Poem,” “Four Poems Titled ‘The Poem,'” “My Graham Foust,”

      & Ariana Reines– “I WANT YOU TO INJECT MY FACE WITH BOTULISM,” “I COULD BE A DIAPER FOR THE DAY’S RESIDUALS,” & “I LOVE MY EMERGENCY.”

  21. marshall

      “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note,” by LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka).

      I’m surprised I can respond to this question sincerely.

  22. dan

      ariana reines has awesome titles.

  23. jereme

      “Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer.”

  24. jereme

      close second is “NEANDERTHAL CLITORIS” by sam pink.

  25. gavin pate

      “Girl With Curious Hair” always stuck it to me, but just lately, I read “The Dickmare” and I want desperately to use that phrase every chance I get. And “Upstairs, Mona Bayed for Dong,” that story, I just kept it at arm’s length for so long, read the collection around it, for some reason terrified what it might be.

  26. Adam

      Haven’t read it, but ‘Rampaging Fuckers of Everything on the Crazy Shitting Planet of the Vomit Atmosphere’ by Mykle Hansen is almost a great enough title to make me buy a book with that awful a title.

  27. Drew

      “Midnight and I’m Not Famous Yet” He was killer for titles.

  28. brandon walter

      man, call me simple, but i like a lot of titles like these:

      under the volcano
      omensetter’s luck
      the rings of saturn

      i dig the barthelme wordy titles too, but there’s something in a short, possibly mysterious title that gets me goin

  29. Eric Anderson

      That’s tough… maybe “Things To Do With Naphtha” by Swenson.

  30. Muzzy

      Tea at the Palaz of Hoon

  31. Caketrain

      “Aisle Idle, Ride Down Rosedale” by Stevie Davis is a nice one. Stevie titles are always nice, actually.

  32. Jake Zucker

      Shirley Jackson’s “One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts” or Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”

  33. Lincoln

      The Temptation to Exist

      Me and Miss Mandible

  34. Andrew Zornoza

      I like these:

      Harlan Ellison: “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman”
      PK Dick: “A Scanner Darkly”
      Herman Melville: “Moby-Dick”
      Ashbery: “The Instruction Manual” and “Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape”
      Kathy Acker: “Blood and Guts in High School”

  35. Matt Cozart

      The Dong with a Luminous Nose — Edward Lear

  36. Seth

      Stanley Crawford’s Some Instructions to My Wife Concerning the Upkeep of the House and Marriage and to My Son and Daughter Concerning the Conduct of Their Childhood.

  37. rk

      Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan–JG Ballard

      Examination at the Womb-door–Ted Hughes

  38. alan

      So far it seems like people like longer titles best. All but three of those mentioned above are four words or more.

      Charles Willeford had a theory that longer titles are better because they draw the reader in by forcing him or her to read more of your words up front.

  39. dan

      not a favorite (i can’t think of one right now), but i kind of like when poems are simply titled “Poem” because to me it suggests that the poem itself is a thing that is so great that it doesn’t require a name.

      though, i know a lot of people would call that laziness.

  40. Trey

      Look through a Complex Eye and See 1000 of Everything
      If Great Lakes
      both by Zachary Schomburg. they are both the kind of “catchy” titles that I always find myself just thinking about sometimes, like sitting doing nothing and the titles run through my head. love when that happens. also happens with Everything Was Fine Until Whatever a lot.

  41. Dreezer

      Speaking of Charles Willeford, “New Hope for the Dead” is a killer title.

  42. Laura Ellen Scott

      I Will Unfold You With My Hairy Hands

  43. michael

      These would have to go to Graham Foust– “The Only Poem,” “Four Poems Titled ‘The Poem,'” “My Graham Foust,”

      & Ariana Reines– “I WANT YOU TO INJECT MY FACE WITH BOTULISM,” “I COULD BE A DIAPER FOR THE DAY’S RESIDUALS,” & “I LOVE MY EMERGENCY.”

  44. Guest

      “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note,” by LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka).

      I’m surprised I can respond to this question sincerely.

  45. dan

      ariana reines has awesome titles.

  46. Trey

      oh yes

  47. Guest

      Haven’t read it, but ‘Rampaging Fuckers of Everything on the Crazy Shitting Planet of the Vomit Atmosphere’ by Mykle Hansen is almost a great enough title to make me buy a book with that awful a title.

  48. brandon walter

      man, call me simple, but i like a lot of titles like these:

      under the volcano
      omensetter’s luck
      the rings of saturn

      i dig the barthelme wordy titles too, but there’s something in a short, possibly mysterious title that gets me goin

  49. Muzzy

      Tea at the Palaz of Hoon

  50. Sampson Starkweather

      i have 2:

      At the Mouth of a Synthetic Covered Stairway Leading to a Metro-North Station, Bound Hand and Foot by Hairless Homeland Security Officials, I Saw You Step Into a Train Headed Towards the West. I Wanted to Smile at You, but an Overzealous Militiaman Slipped a Black Hood Over my Head and Carried Me Off to a Big Black Town Car with Tinted Windows, Stopping at Dunkin’ Doughnuts on the Way to Set Fire to the Woods Where We Lived
      http://www.h-ngm-n.com/h_ngm_n10/sampson-starkweather.html

      After Reading the Poem about Training an Army of ATM Machines to Do my Bidding and Later, on Cold Lonely Nights, whose Squarish Bodies I would Seduce with Smirnoff Ice and Debitcard-Play as a Plan to Spawn a Mechanical Clan of Starkweathers to Rule the Free Market to a Crowd of Portly Ladies who Smelled like a Mix of Unopened Tennis Balls and the Perfume Section of a Macy’s Department Store in The First Mutual Bank of Chappaqua, where for 20 Seconds that Sound like a Moment-of-Silence After a Principal’s Prayer that Crackles Over the Loudspeaker of a Kindergarten Classroom, Carried like a Wave, until one Teller-Lady with Chemical-Clown Make-up on, Stood up in the So-Called Silence and Burst into Thunderous Applause…

  51. Trey

      Look through a Complex Eye and See 1000 of Everything
      If Great Lakes
      both by Zachary Schomburg. they are both the kind of “catchy” titles that I always find myself just thinking about sometimes, like sitting doing nothing and the titles run through my head. love when that happens. also happens with Everything Was Fine Until Whatever a lot.

  52. Dreezer

      Speaking of Charles Willeford, “New Hope for the Dead” is a killer title.

  53. Laura Ellen Scott

      I Will Unfold You With My Hairy Hands

  54. Trey

      oh yes

  55. Sampson Starkweather

      i have 2:

      At the Mouth of a Synthetic Covered Stairway Leading to a Metro-North Station, Bound Hand and Foot by Hairless Homeland Security Officials, I Saw You Step Into a Train Headed Towards the West. I Wanted to Smile at You, but an Overzealous Militiaman Slipped a Black Hood Over my Head and Carried Me Off to a Big Black Town Car with Tinted Windows, Stopping at Dunkin’ Doughnuts on the Way to Set Fire to the Woods Where We Lived
      http://www.h-ngm-n.com/h_ngm_n10/sampson-starkweather.html

      After Reading the Poem about Training an Army of ATM Machines to Do my Bidding and Later, on Cold Lonely Nights, whose Squarish Bodies I would Seduce with Smirnoff Ice and Debitcard-Play as a Plan to Spawn a Mechanical Clan of Starkweathers to Rule the Free Market to a Crowd of Portly Ladies who Smelled like a Mix of Unopened Tennis Balls and the Perfume Section of a Macy’s Department Store in The First Mutual Bank of Chappaqua, where for 20 Seconds that Sound like a Moment-of-Silence After a Principal’s Prayer that Crackles Over the Loudspeaker of a Kindergarten Classroom, Carried like a Wave, until one Teller-Lady with Chemical-Clown Make-up on, Stood up in the So-Called Silence and Burst into Thunderous Applause…

  56. Kyle Minor

      The first-tier list would be full of Barry Hannah titles.
      The second-tier list would be full of Lee K. Abbott titles: The Talk Talked Between Worms; One of Star Wars, One of Doom; What Y Was; How Sin Is Said in Wonderland; The Unfinished Business of Childhood; Wet Places at Noon; X; The Human Use of Inhuman Beings; The View of Me From Mars; The Final Proof of Fate and Circumstance; Ninety Nights on Mercury.
      Also: Nathan Englander, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. DFW, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Donald Ray Pollock, Fish Sticks. Amy Hempel, At the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried. Rick Moody, The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven. Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gimpel the Fool.

  57. Mike Meginnis

      I always really liked “Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said,” although I have no idea why that’s one of Dick’s better-perceived books.

  58. zusya17

      The Policeman’s Beard Is Half Constructed

      With the exception of this introduction, the writing in this book was all done by a computer. The book has been proofread for spelling but otherwise is completely unedited…

  59. Kyle Minor

      The first-tier list would be full of Barry Hannah titles.
      The second-tier list would be full of Lee K. Abbott titles: The Talk Talked Between Worms; One of Star Wars, One of Doom; What Y Was; How Sin Is Said in Wonderland; The Unfinished Business of Childhood; Wet Places at Noon; X; The Human Use of Inhuman Beings; The View of Me From Mars; The Final Proof of Fate and Circumstance; Ninety Nights on Mercury.
      Also: Nathan Englander, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. DFW, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Donald Ray Pollock, Fish Sticks. Amy Hempel, At the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried. Rick Moody, The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven. Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gimpel the Fool.

  60. Jhon Baker

      “when life gives you lemons, shut up and eat your lemons.”

  61. Joseph Riippi

      Zidane’s Melancholy, Jean-Phillipe Toussaint.

  62. mimi

      CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
      Everything That Rises Must Converge

  63. jesusangelgarcia

      Ditto: The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven.

      Also: Do No Go Gentle Into That Good Night
      (I like my themes spelled out)

      I loved some of Chelsea Martin’s crazy-long titles, but I can’t find that book right now to quote.

  64. Jhon Baker

      “when life gives you lemons, shut up and eat your lemons.”

  65. Joseph Riippi

      Zidane’s Melancholy, Jean-Phillipe Toussaint.

  66. mimi

      CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
      Everything That Rises Must Converge

  67. jesusangelgarcia

      Ditto: The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven.

      Also: Do No Go Gentle Into That Good Night
      (I like my themes spelled out)

      I loved some of Chelsea Martin’s crazy-long titles, but I can’t find that book right now to quote.

  68. Ned

      Don Share – Squandermania

  69. d

      V.

  70. Joseph Riippi

      (changed my mind)

      “And Lead Us Not Into Penn Station”

  71. Ned

      Don Share – Squandermania

  72. d

      V.

  73. Bambi A.

      You’re Ugly, Too
      The Unbearable Lightness of Being
      Eeeee Eee Eeee

  74. Joseph Riippi

      (changed my mind)

      “And Lead Us Not Into Penn Station”

  75. Bambi A.

      You’re Ugly, Too
      The Unbearable Lightness of Being
      Eeeee Eee Eeee