BOOKS
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pointed to the poem as a voice, a presentation or performance-piece. When
Eliot entides one poem "The Love Song of
J.
Alfred Prufrock" and anoth–
er "Song for Simeon," the difference in the prepositions says a great deal
about the relationship between poet and persona. Ferry parses this and
many other concerns with an imaginative thoroughness. What are the dif–
ferent expectations generated in a reader by different tides-say, "To
M-," "To Mary," and "To My Wife"? Generic titles, grammatical and
rhetorical appeals, participial idioms, nouns and names, quotations and
questions, even evasions....Ferry considers the overtones and implications
of every conceivable use for the title space, with examples drawn from an
extraordinary range of poets, Herrick to Heaney. There are titans of the
trade, of course, whose tails nearly wag the dog-Jonson, Wordsworth,
Browning, Hardy, Frost, Stevens, Auden, Ashbery-and they are paid spe–
cial attention. What makes both her classifications and her examples so
lively is her sense that "titles always look back to their past-imitating,
modifying, questioning, rebelling against it-at the same time that they
vividly reflect and energetically respond to the cul tural si tuations that
constitute their present." This is an indispensable hornbook. Anne Ferry
has written the last word on the first words of any poem.
J.
D. McCLATCHY
