Citing Poetry Using MLA Format
1. Short
poems are always in quotation marks, and long poems are always in italics.
Short
poems: “Design”
“When
I Consider How My Light Is Spent”
“The
Sick Rose”
Long poems: Paradise Lost
2. For
poems and verse plays, type quotations of three lines or less in the text and
insert a slash
with a space on
each side to separate the lines. Type
the lines you quote exactly as they
appear in the original poem. Give the line numbers in parentheses, immediately after the closing
quotation marks and before
the closing punctuation.
Ex: In Adrienne Rich’s “Aunt Jennifer’s
Tigers,” Rich says that “Uncle’s wedding
band / Sits
heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand” (7-8).
The band evidently is a
sign of his
oppression.
3. Block
quotations: Quotations of four
lines or more should be indented two tabs or ten spaces
from the rest of
the text. No quotation marks are needed
for block quotes, and line numbers
should be placed
immediately following the closing punctuation.
Ex: Emily Dickinson concludes “I’m Nobody!
Who Are You?” with a
characteristically bittersweet stanza:
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong
June
To an admiring bog! (5-8)
4. THE
GOLDEN RULE: If you quote,
comment on the quotation. Let the
reader know what
you make of it and
why you quote it.
5. Blend quotations into your own sentences. Quotations should never be brought in unless
you
prepare your
reader for them in some way. DO NOT,
for example, bring in quotations in the
following manner:
Alexander
Pope’s pastoral sky is darkened by thick clouds, bringing a feeling of gloom
that is associated
with the feeling that can be sensed at a funeral. “See gloomy cloudes
obscure the
cheerful day” (5).
This abrupt
quotation throws the reader off balance because it is not blended into the
previous
sentence. It is better to prepare the reader to move
from the discourse to the quotation, as in
the following
revision:
Alexander
Pope’s pastoral scene is marked by sorrow and depression, as though the
spectator, who is
asked to “see gloomy clouds obscure the cheerful day” (5), is present at
the funeral.
Here the quotation
is made an actual part of the sentence.
This sort of blending is
satisfactory, provided
the quotation is brief.
6. Use three spaced
periods (an ellipsis) to show omissions.
Whether your quotation is long or
short, you will
often need to change some of the material in it to conform to your own
sentence
requirements. You might wish to omit
something from the quotation that is not
essential to your
point. Indicate such omissions with
three spaced periods ( . . . ).
Use square
brackets to insert your own explanations within quotations. If you add words of
your own to integrate the quotation into your train of
discourse or to explain words that may
seem obscure, put
square brackets around these words.
Ex: In the “Tintern Abbey Lines,”
Wordsworth refers to a trance-like state, in
which the “affections gently lead . . .
[him] on” (42-3). He is unquestionably
describing
the state of extreme relaxation, for he mentions that the “motion of . . .
human blood [was] / Almost suspended
[i.e., his pulse slowed]” (44-7) and that in
these states he considered himself to be
“a living soul” (49).
7.
Like any literary work, when discussing poetry use the present
tense of verbs.