Cite a Poem?

“How to cite a poem?”- This one question takes away the night’s sleep of many students. There are so many types of referencing styles that it becomes too overwhelming for students. Among them, referencing poems is considered as the most confusing one. Seriously what to remember and what not? Need not to be worried as this blog presents the ultimate guide to clear all your doubts on how to cite a poem. Read on to know how you can carry out this job like a pro.

Using quotes about poetry in essays is a common technique applied by everyone to elevate the quality of the content. At first, let’s make it clear that you will not learn how to cite poems in a blink of an eye, but with time and practice, it will as smooth as icing on the cake. So let’s get into it right away.

How to cite lines from a poem in different referencing styles?

There are different types of referencing styles. It can be of various kinds, but the major types are as follows:

• MLA
• APA
• Harvard

Let us now see how you should cite the poem in the different referencing styles.

How to cite a poem in MLA?

In-text– At first, you must learn how to quote a poem line. When you take few lines from a poem, you have to use double quotation marks before and after it. Separate each line with a slash(/).

Example: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,/And sorry I could not travel both”

When you quote many lines or a large part of the poem, you must separate it from your text and start with a new paragraph. It must have a two-inch indentation from the left, and there must be double spacing between each line. You should use the lines as exactly as they are in the original text. However, no quotation marks or slashes are required here.

Example:        Then took the other, as just as fair,

                        And having perhaps the better claim,

                        Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

                        Though as for that the passing there

                        Had worn them really about the same,

                        And both that morning equally lay

                        In leaves, no step had trodden black.

In both cases, the lines will have the in-text citation at the end, where you put the last name of the author along with page number. There will not be any comma (,) in between. There are different types of poem formats according to which the content of the citation change like, if it is a verse, you will write the line number instead of the page no.

Example: Of all the things that happened there/ That’s all I remember (Cullen 11-12)

You should also know how to cite in an essay. There are various ways to do this; you can either mention the author’s name in the sentence before quoting the poem lines or you can straight get into the lines as shown above.

Example: In ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, Robert Frost says, “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,/ But I have promises to keep,/And miles to go before I sleep.” (13-15).

Apart from this, you can also include the name of the poem in case you are using two poems by the same author or many writers with the same name. To create the in-text citation, use the last name of the author, put a comma (,), the title of the poem or a concise version of it within quotation marks, include a space, followed by the line numbers.

Example: Romanticism is witnessed in many poems of the 18^th century, lines like “When all at once I saw a crowd,/A host, of golden daffodils;” (Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” 3-4), and “These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs/With a soft inland murmur.—Once again” (Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey” 3-4) portrays its essence.

Always remember that the punctuation will come before the parenthesis and within the quotes, only the punctuation which is present in the original text will be there. When paraphrasing the lines, you have to provide a citation. You have to use the quotations in a way that it fits the proper essay format and does not look like out of context.

Work cited page- After you have written the content, you need to create the works cited section. For this, you have to start with a new page. Here you will write the full detailed reference of the source. It will go in the following order, Last name of the author, comma (,), First name, full stop (.), the poem’s title with a full stop at end (.) within double quotation marks, the name of the book in italics, place of publication: name of the publisher, year. Page number. Medium of publication.

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