This is a powerful, elegant, and most original study that moves across and through the range of English and American verse. . . . What is so impressive, too, about this book is that the author's thought about the nature and structure and function of titles is rooted in, and leads to, wonderfully illuminating readings of the poems in question.-John Hollander, Yale University
There hasn't been an adequate history of the business of poetic titling until this new book by Ferry, and it is stimulating and welcome. . . .This is an indispensable hornbook. Anne Ferry has written the last word on the first words on any poem.-Partisan Review

Anne Ferry has taught at Hunter, Wellesley, and Boston Colleges and at Harvard University.

Introduction; Part I. Ownership and Self-Presentation; 1. Who gives the title; 2. Who has the title; Part II. Interpretive Fictions: 3. Who 'says' the poem' 4. Who 'hears' the poem; Part III. Authoritative Hierarchies: 5. What kind the poem belongs to; 6. What the poem is 'about'; Part IV. Undermining Titles: 7. Quotations in the title space; 8. Evasions of the title space; Afterward; Notes; Index.