Titles in Poetry

[milo]

A recent discussion reminded me of previous discussions of titles in poetry.

What is the purpose of titles in poetry?

We had a great and vibrant discussion right here years ago on the purpose and function of titles in poetry.  It started around an untitled poem I wrote (I will post at the bottom) without a title.  We all started picking titles for it ranging from the silly to the serious to the bizarre but none of us could find a suitable title.

Does a poem need a title?  Thousands of poems throughout the Romantic and Victorian age simply used the first line as a title (though you could argue they were written with the thought the first line would be the theme of the poem)

My magnus opus you could say was a poem I wrote with 5 individual poems all with their own title where the title is used as the key that ties them all together.  I experimented for a while using the title efficiently by allowing the poem to logically continue.  I do think a good title can steer the understanding of a poem.  A good title can certainly draw a reader into a poem.  I knew someone that wrote a book of over 900 poems and they were all titled the equivalent of Sonnet XXIV.  I don't know that anyone would stop to read that in the age of short attention spans.

Anyway, I am babbling on, what is your thoughts on titles in poetry?

(Here is the poem that started the discussion, feel free to offer title suggestions)

My nanna, Anna Margaret McGee,
when her teeth had grown old as old can get,
broke a cuspid on the stone of a peach
before she set off to the sea.

With a flat disk of a skiff and an afghan net
and a sail that she knitted from dreams
she sculled off the banks and over the coral
and glazed past the harbor for sea.

Sprinkling petals of hasta over stern Panthalassa
she stopped where the sperm whales meet –
where they thrust and they dive in a wet minuet - 
she cast out her net to the black black sea.

There she’ll fish and she’ll sail and dance with the whales,
she’ll catch stars that shimmer like grunion
and I’ll wait on the porch and sing till I’m hoarse
until she returns from the cold cold sea.