For Title Week, I’ve selected a poem by Elaine Equi. If you like the poem, check out more of Equi’s work (here, here, here, here). And read her essays about greeting cards here, artistic ambition here, and being an ‘American’ poet here.
Table of Contents for an Imaginary Book
By Elaine EquiSpree
Monster Gardens
Up Close, Out Back, Down Under
Flying Backward
The Drunken Voluptuary Workers in the Solarium
Dove Sighting
All the Yellow in the World
A Curse I Put on Myself
Three Sides of the Same Coin
Aria
Night Cream
Good Luck With Your Chaos
The Glass Stagecoach
In the Country of Mauve
Parrots and Dictators
Slumming
Walking the Evening Back Home
A Twelve Course Dinner of Regret
The Gap Gatherer
Burning Down the Ocean
Multiple Choice
Alec Soth's Archived Blog 
I like this poem, I like this blog
Comment by carlo — April 20, 2007 @ 9:11 am
[…] 135. Alec Soth’s “Friday Poem” today was an intriguing one titled “Table of Contents for an Imaginary Book” by the poet Elaine Equi. It spoke to me in a lot of ways, but I found it particularly interesting to think about the poem as a designer. Soth has a few more links to Elaine Equi’s work online, but I also really enjoyed these poems about “objects,” or maybe the ideas or descriptions of objects. Equi’s poem about “Wittgenstein’s Colors” seems to catalog some of the lovely observations Wittgenstein made at the end of his life. More about Equi in this week’s NYT Book Review. […]
Pingback by Lined & Unlined » Blog Archive » Reading 135 — April 20, 2007 @ 5:16 pm
My favorite title is “A Twelve Course Dinner of Regret.”
Saying it aloud is very satisfying.
Comment by Dane Deasy — April 20, 2007 @ 6:02 pm
yeah, it´s great…somehow you see pictures and create the book in your mind…really nice…
Comment by CHRISCHA — April 20, 2007 @ 7:47 pm
this is super : SUPER thank u Alec Soth
Comment by robert — April 22, 2007 @ 4:32 am
Parrots and Dictators
this one stood out for me. also, Monster Gardens.
Comment by charley — April 22, 2007 @ 7:48 pm
melville dedicates a chunk of moby dick to the terror inherent in a whale with a name. ursula le guin pens a story (‘she unnames them’) where eve undoes all of adam’s hard work. t.s. eliot writes a poem titled ‘the naming of cats.’ just to name a few.
there’s never been a shortage of writers, writing about titles.
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i’ve never been here before but this is an absolutely terrific blog.
Comment by david — April 23, 2007 @ 7:58 pm