"Dream Song 29" seems like a poem-y enough title. But what does it really do? Does it help us understand the poem? Well, let's break it down and take a closer look.
First off, we have "Dream." The word "dream" prepares us for something other than reality. If your dreams are anything like Shmoop's dreams, they are unpredictable. So "dream" also tells us to expect the unexpected. It might not prepare us for the "hacks her body up" part, but we should go into the poem with the sense that anything could happen.
"Song" is, well, a song. If Berryman is calling this thing a "song," sound must be important. Shmoop bets you're yelling at your computer screen right now, "Hey Shmoop! Sound and rhythm are, like, always important in poetry. Duh!" Fair enough. Berryman could have used "song" in the title just to emphasize his focus on sound—to let us know this is a poem that needs to be spoken, needs to be sung. He could also have used "song" in an ironic way. When we hear the word "song," we tend to think of something light and upbeat. "Song" is generally thought of as a positive word—a word that generates good feelings. What we get from this poem is pretty far from that positive sense of the word, though.
The last title component is the number, "29." The number functions as a marker to differentiate this dream song from some other song. It also tells us that there are a whole bunch of these little ditties. Berryman wrote nearly 400 "songs." Yup. Four. Zero. Zero. Reading just one doesn't seem so bad now, does it?