XML::Twig (by the same module author) can give you what you want: 
use warnings;
use strict;
use XML::Twig;

my $xml = <<XML;
<html>
<title>four</title>
  <head>
   <title>one</title>
  </head>
  <body>
  <title>two</title>
  </body>
<title>three</title>
</html>
XML

my $twig = XML::Twig->new(
    twig_handlers => { 'html/head/title' => sub { print $_->text(), "\
+n" } },
);
$twig->parse($xml);

__END__

one

[download]

In reply to Re: HTML::TreeBuilder::XPath returns things I don't need? by toolic
in thread HTML::TreeBuilder::XPath returns things I don't need? by szabgab

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