How to cite a poem: A quick guide

Citing a poem isn't just about following rules. At its core, you need to credit the poet and show your reader where you found their work, whether it’s in a book, on a website, or part of a collection. This means creating a bibliography entry for your sources list and an in-text citation right where you quote them. The specific format—especially for things like line numbers—will depend on the style guide you're using, like MLA or APA.

Why Citing Poems Correctly Matters

Learning how to cite a poem is more than just an academic hoop to jump through; it's a fundamental skill that makes your writing stronger. Think of it as your entry ticket into a great literary conversation. Every citation you add is your way of nodding to the voices that came before you, giving the artist their due, and showing your readers the foundation you're building your argument on.

When you don't cite your sources, your analysis just floats in a void. It lacks the authority that comes from being tied to the original work. But with proper citation, your work gains instant credibility and lets your audience retrace your intellectual steps.

Building Your Credibility and Honoring the Craft

Nailing your citations accomplishes a few critical things all at once:

• You avoid plagiarism. This one’s the most obvious. Giving credit where it's due is non-negotiable in any academic or professional setting.
• You bolster your argument. A good citation shows your analysis is grounded in textual evidence, not just your opinion. It makes everything you say more persuasive.
• You respect the artist. Poetry is a meticulous craft, built word by word. A citation is a small but powerful act of respect for the poet's labor and creativity.
• You guide your reader. Clear citations are like a map, allowing your readers to find the original poem, explore the work for themselves, and deepen their own understanding.

Understanding the Citation Landscape

Different academic fields have their own preferred citation styles, and each one handles poetry a little differently. The "big three" you'll almost certainly run into are MLA (Modern Language Association), which dominates the humanities; APA (American Psychological Association), the standard in social sciences; and Chicago, which you'll often see in history and publishing.

Picking the right style isn't about personal preference—it's about following the requirements for your class, journal, or field. Getting these conventions right is crucial for communicating effectively in an academic context, much like providing clear peer review feedback examples helps elevate scholarly work.

The cultural power of poetry makes accurate citation even more important. Just think of Robert Frost’s line, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood." That single phrase pulls up approximately 891,000 search results, appearing in everything from business seminars to personal blogs. When you cite a line that well-known, doing it correctly shows you're engaging with the work seriously, not just dropping a famous quote.

Essential Information for Citing Any Poem

Here’s a quick rundown of the core details you'll need to gather before you start building your citation, no matter the style.

Information Needed	Why It's Important	Example
Poet's Full Name	This is the primary creator and must be credited.	Emily Dickinson
Poem's Title	Identifies the specific work you're analyzing.	"Because I could not stop for Death"
Publication Source	Where the poem was published (book, website, anthology).	The Poems of Emily Dickinson
Publisher	The company that published the source.	Belknap Press
Publication Year	Tells the reader which version of the work you used.	1999
Page/Line Numbers	Pinpoints the exact location of your quote.	lines 1-4
URL or DOI	Required for online sources for easy retrieval.	https://www.poetryfoundation.org/...

Having this information ready from the start will make the actual process of formatting your citations a whole lot smoother.

A Guide to Citing Poems in MLA Style

If you're writing a paper for a literature, arts, or humanities class, you'll almost certainly be using the Modern Language Association, or MLA, style. MLA is the gold standard for these fields because it's specifically designed to handle the quirks of literary sources like poems. Nailing your citations shows your instructor you know the rules of the road in academic writing.

The whole point of MLA is simple: give your reader a clear map to find the exact source you used. This map has two parts that work together: a detailed entry on your Works Cited page and a quick in-text citation in your essay that points to it.

Let's walk through exactly how to build these for the most common ways you'll find poems.

Building Your MLA Works Cited Entry

Your Works Cited page is the master list of every source you've referenced. The format for a poem changes a little depending on where you found it—in an anthology, a poet's own collection, or online.

One of the most common scenarios is citing a poem you found in an anthology, which is just a big book collecting works from many different authors. You have to credit both the poet and the anthology.

Here’s the basic structure to follow:

• Poet's Last Name, First Name.
• "Title of the Poem." (in quotes)
• Title of the Anthology. (in italics)
• Edited by Editor's First Name Last Name,
• Publisher,
• Year of Publication,
• pp. Page Range of the Poem.

Let's put this into practice. Imagine you're citing Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" from a Norton anthology. The entry would look like this:

Frost, Robert. "The Road Not Taken." The Norton Anthology of American Literature, edited by Robert S. Levine, 9th ed., vol. D, W.W. Norton & Company, 2017, pp. 314-15.

See how every detail, from the editor to the volume number, helps someone pinpoint your source? If the poem came from a book of a single poet's work, it's a bit simpler since you don't have an editor or anthology title to worry about.

For instance, here’s Mary Oliver’s "Wild Geese" from her own collection:

Oliver, Mary. "Wild Geese." Dream Work, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986, p. 14.

Crafting Accurate MLA In-Text Citations

With your Works Cited entry sorted, you can now create the brief citations that go inside your essay. This is where MLA gets really specific for poetry. Instead of using page numbers like you would for a novel, you should almost always use line numbers. This is much more precise and lets your reader find the exact phrase you're analyzing, no matter what edition they have.

The format couldn't be simpler: (Poet's Last Name Line Number).

For example, if you're quoting from William Butler Yeats's "The Second Coming," your sentence might look like this:

The poem's unsettling imagery begins with the line, "Turning and turning in the widening gyre" (Yeats 1).

If you’ve already named the poet in your sentence, you don't need to repeat it in the parentheses. That would be redundant.

Yeats opens his poem with the image of a falcon that "cannot hear the falconer" (2).

Key Rules for Line Numbers in Your Text:

• A single line: Just use the number. (Frost 5).
• A range of lines: Use a hyphen. (Oliver 7-9).
• Multiple, separate lines: Use commas. (Yeats 1, 5).

But what if a poem doesn't have line numbers? This happens sometimes, especially with very short poems or certain online versions. In that rare case, you fall back to the page number from the book, adding "p." to avoid confusion: (Frost p. 314).

Handling Special Cases in MLA

Literary analysis isn't always straightforward. What if a poem has a ridiculously long title? Or what if you're writing about several poems by the same author?

When a poem's title is a mouthful, like T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," you can shorten it after the first mention. Just use a key phrase that's easy to recognize, like "Prufrock." Your in-text citation then needs that shortened title to keep things clear: (Eliot, "Prufrock" 3). This keeps your writing from getting clunky.

If you’re juggling two or more poems by the same poet—say, Emily Dickinson—you have to tell your reader which poem you're quoting from each time. You do this by adding a shortened version of the poem's title to the citation.

One poem explores the finality of death through the image of a fly (Dickinson, "I heard a Fly buzz" 1), while another presents it as a gentle journey (Dickinson, "Because I could not stop" 5-6).

This small detail ensures every quote connects back to the right source on your Works Cited page. Getting these conventions right is what separates sloppy analysis from sharp, credible academic work.

While MLA is the undisputed heavyweight champion in literary studies, you'll find it's far from the only style guide out there. If you're working in the social sciences, education, or psychology, the American Psychological Association (APA) style is your go-to. Meanwhile, fields like history, business, and the fine arts often lean on the versatile Chicago style.

Learning to cite a poem in these other formats is a crucial skill for any academic writer. It's about showing you can adapt to different contexts.

Don't worry, the core principles you already know still apply. Both APA and Chicago simply adapt their rules to handle the unique structure of poetry. While they might feel a bit different from MLA, the fundamental goal is identical: guiding your reader clearly and accurately back to the original source.

Citing Poems in APA 7th Edition

APA style is famous for its author-date system, which puts a spotlight on the timeliness of research. When you cite a poem, this means your in-text citation will typically feature the poet's last name and the year of publication.

APA is generally less concerned with line numbers than MLA is, but they can be a huge help to your reader if you're quoting from a longer poem. Think of it as a courtesy.

When it comes to your References page, the entry for a poem from an anthology looks a whole lot like a citation for a book chapter. You credit the poet first, then provide all the details about the collection where you found it.

Here’s the basic formula to follow:

• Poet's Last Name, First Initial. (Year of Publication).
• Title of the poem.
• In Editor's First Initial. Last Name (Ed.), Title of the anthology (pp. page range).
• Publisher.

Let’s put this into practice. Say you're citing "I, Too" by Langston Hughes from a collection. Your reference entry would be structured just like this:

Hughes, L. (2002). I, too. In A. Rampersad & D. Roessel (Eds.), The collected poems of Langston Hughes (p. 58). Vintage Books.

Notice those little details? The poem's title is in sentence case, and the editor's name comes right before the anthology's title. Getting these small things right is what makes an APA citation perfect.

Navigating In-Text Citations in APA

For your in-text citations, stick to the author-date format. If you quote directly—and you almost always will with poetry—you must include a page number. APA’s official guidelines also suggest that for classical works like poems, adding line or stanza numbers is a great way to help the reader find your exact quote.

• Basic author-date: Hughes (2002) explores powerful themes of resilience and hope.
• With a direct quote: The poem ends on a powerful note of assertion, declaring, "I, too, am America" (Hughes, 2002, p. 58).
• Including line numbers: The poet's defiance is clear when he states, "They'll see how beautiful I am / And be ashamed" (Hughes, 2002, p. 58, lines 16-17).

While line numbers aren't always mandatory in APA, it’s a good habit to get into when you’re analyzing poetry closely. It adds a layer of precision that your professor will appreciate.

To help you visualize how all these pieces fit together, this infographic breaks down the core elements for the Works Cited entry, in-text citation, and formatting rules.

This visual guide reinforces the idea that every piece, from the punctuation in your reference list to the parentheses in your text, works in harmony to create a clear and accurate citation.

Tackling Poem Citations in Chicago Style

Chicago style gives you two distinct systems to choose from: Notes-Bibliography (NB) and Author-Date. The NB system, which you'll see all the time in the humanities, uses footnotes or endnotes paired with a bibliography. The Author-Date system is much more like APA and is preferred in the sciences.

When citing a poem using Chicago's NB style, your first note for any source will be the full, detailed version. After that, any subsequent notes for that same source can be shortened. The bibliography entry is where you'll lay out all the complete publication information.

Here’s how it breaks down for a poem from an anthology in the NB system:

• Full Note: Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken," in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, ed. Robert S. Levine (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017), 314.
• Shortened Note: Frost, "The Road Not Taken," 314.
• Bibliography Entry: Frost, Robert. "The Road Not Taken." In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, edited by Robert S. Levine, 314–15. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017.

The biggest differences you'll spot right away are the use of commas instead of periods in the bibliography and the inclusion of the publisher's location.

For in-text references, the NB style is beautifully simple. You just insert a superscript number that corresponds to your footnote or endnote.

The poet reflects on the nature of choice and its lifelong impact.¹

This clean approach keeps the main body of your essay uncluttered. All the citation details are neatly tucked away at the bottom of the page or the end of your paper.

To make things even clearer, let's look at how the same poem from an anthology would appear in the bibliography or works cited list for each of the three major styles.

Poem Citation Comparison MLA vs APA vs Chicago

Element	MLA 9 Example	APA 7 Example	Chicago (NB) Example
Poet's Name	Frost, Robert.	Frost, R.	Frost, Robert.
Poem Title	"The Road Not Taken."	(2017). The road not taken.	"The Road Not Taken."
Anthology Info	The Norton Anthology of American Literature,	In R. S. Levine (Ed.), The Norton anthology of American literature	In The Norton Anthology of American Literature,
Editor	edited by Robert S. Levine,	(pp. 314-315).	edited by Robert S. Levine, 314–15.
Publisher & Year	W.W. Norton & Company, 2017,	W.W. Norton & Company.	New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017.
Page Numbers	pp. 314-15.	(Original work published 1916)
Full Entry	Frost, Robert. "The Road Not Taken." The Norton Anthology of American Literature, edited by Robert S. Levine, W.W. Norton & Company, 2017, pp. 314-15.	Frost, R. (2017). The road not taken. In R. S. Levine (Ed.), The Norton anthology of American literature (pp. 314-315). W.W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1916)	Frost, Robert. "The Road Not Taken." In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, edited by Robert S. Levine, 314–15. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017.

Seeing them side-by-side highlights the subtle but critical differences in punctuation, capitalization, and the order of information.

Getting comfortable with these different formats allows you to adapt your writing to any academic setting. It ensures your work is always presented professionally, no matter what style guide your course requires.

How to Format and Quote Poetry in Your Essay

Knowing how to build a bibliography entry is one thing, but the real test is weaving a poet's words into your own essay. Done right, a quote becomes powerful evidence for your analysis. Done poorly, it just feels dropped in.

The good news is that the rules for formatting are straightforward. They’re designed to preserve the poem's original structure while keeping your essay clean and readable. The formatting all comes down to one simple question: how many lines are you quoting?

Quoting Three Lines or Fewer

When you're pulling just a short snippet from a poem—three lines or less—you can run it directly into your own sentence. No need for special formatting.

The only trick is showing your reader where the original line breaks were. You do this with a forward slash ( / ), making sure to put a space on either side. It’s a clean, simple way to maintain the poem's integrity without disrupting the flow of your paragraph.

Here’s an example using Emily Dickinson:

Dickinson captures a sense of quiet determination when she writes, "The Soul selects her own Society — / Then — shuts the Door —" (1-2).

See how that works? The slash indicates the line break, keeping your writing concise while honoring the original text.

Formatting Four Lines or More as a Block Quote

When you need to quote a longer chunk of a poem—four lines or more—the rules change. You can't just run these lines together. Instead, you need to set them off from your main text in what's called a block quote.

This is crucial because it visually signals to your reader that you're presenting a longer excerpt, and it preserves the poet's intentional line breaks and stanza structure.

Setting up a block quote is easy once you know the steps:

• Start the quote on a brand new line.
• Indent the entire chunk of poetry half an inch from the left margin.
• Do not use quotation marks. The indentation itself signals that it's a quote.
• Copy the poem exactly as it appears—punctuation, capitalization, and all.
• The parenthetical citation goes after the final punctuation mark of the quote.

Let's say you're analyzing Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." Your block quote would look like this:

Whitman’s expansive vision of self and nature is on full display in the opening lines of his epic poem:

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul, (1-4)

This formatting makes the poem stand out, giving your reader a moment to appreciate its form before you dive back into your analysis. Mastering this is a core skill for any serious literary essay.

Introducing and Analyzing Your Quotes

Just dropping a quote into your essay is never enough. The best analysis frames every quote with your own words. Think of it as a "quote sandwich"—you introduce the quote, present the evidence (the quote itself), and then explain its significance.

Before you quote, give some context. Who's speaking? What's happening in the poem at this moment?

After the quote, unpack it. Why these specific lines? How do they prove the point you’re making? Strong transitions and thoughtful analysis are what separate a good paper from a great one. If you're looking to sharpen these skills, exploring resources on how to improve academic writing can offer some valuable strategies for making your evidence truly work for you.

By carefully selecting, formatting, and analyzing your quotes, you turn them from simple decoration into the backbone of a persuasive and insightful argument.

Handling Tricky and Uncommon Poem Citations

Standard anthologies and single-author collections are one thing, but what happens when you’re staring at a poem that doesn’t fit neatly into those boxes? In the real world of research, sources can be messy. You'll find poems in digital archives, watch spoken-word performances on YouTube, or even work with texts that have no clear author.

Knowing how to handle these tricky situations is what separates good citation from great citation. The core principle never changes: provide the clearest possible path for your reader to find your source.

Citing Poems from Websites and Online Journals

The internet is a treasure trove of poetry, from major archives like the Poetry Foundation to the personal blogs of emerging writers. When you pull a poem from an online source, you just need to add a few extra details that print sources don't require.

The key additions are the URL or a DOI (Digital Object Identifier). A URL is the direct web address, while a DOI is a permanent, unique string that’s much more stable over time. Some styles also ask for the date you accessed the material, which is a good habit since web pages can change or disappear.

• MLA 9 Example (Online Journal):
  Clifford, Hannah R. "Beholden & Beheld." Hereynolds.com, 11 Nov. 2025, hereynolds.com/beholden-beheld/. Accessed 15 Dec. 2025.

• APA 7 Example (Website):
  Clifford, H. R. (2025, November 11). Beholden & beheld. Hereynolds.com. https://hereynolds.com/beholden-beheld/

• Chicago NB Example (Blog):
  Clifford, Hannah R. "Beholden & Beheld." Hereynolds.com (blog), November 11, 2025. https://hereynolds.com/beholden-beheld/.

Notice the subtle differences. MLA often includes an access date, which is helpful for volatile web content. APA and Chicago, on the other hand, usually skip it unless the content is designed to be updated frequently.

Handling Untitled or Anonymous Poems

Sooner or later, you'll encounter a poem with no official title. This is especially common with older works. Think of Emily Dickinson—many of her poems are simply known by their first lines. In these cases, that's exactly what you use in place of a title.

MLA Works Cited:
Dickinson, Emily. "Because I could not stop for Death." The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by R.W. Franklin, Belknap Press, 1999, p. 236.

For the in-text citation, you do the same, just shortening the first line if it's a long one: (Dickinson, "Because I could not stop" 1-2).

And what if the work is anonymous? If you’ve done your due diligence and truly can't identify the poet, you simply start the citation with the poem's title. Your in-text citation then uses a shortened version of that title to point the reader to the right entry.

MLA In-Text Citation:
The ancient poem explores themes of loss and legacy ("The Seafarer" 58-60).

Citing Spoken-Word and Performance Poetry

Poetry isn't confined to the page. Spoken-word performances, easily found on platforms like YouTube or Vimeo, are a powerful and completely valid source for analysis. When citing a poem from a video, you're essentially citing the video itself.

You'll need to gather info like the performer's name, the video title, the website (e.g., YouTube), the uploader or channel, the upload date, and the URL.

• MLA 9 Example (YouTube):
  Button Poetry. "‘OCD’ by Neil Hilborn." YouTube, 30 July 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXy0_g9_dM4.

• APA 7 Example (YouTube):
  Button Poetry. (2013, July 30). ‘OCD’ by Neil Hilborn [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXy0_g9_dM4

When you quote or reference a specific moment, use a timestamp for your in-text citation. It’s the video equivalent of line numbers.

The performance reaches an emotional peak when Hilborn repeats the phrase "I love you" (Button Poetry 1:15-1:20).

What About Poems with Multiple Authors or Translators?

Collaborative and translated poems bring their own unique wrinkles. If a poem was written by two poets, just list their names in the order they appear on the page. Simple enough.

For translated works, you need to credit both the original poet and the translator. Usually, the poet comes first. However, if your analysis focuses heavily on the translator's choices and language, style guides often provide a way to list the translator as the primary author.

This is where things can get interesting. Tracking attribution can sometimes uncover fascinating stories, like the famous matador-attributed poem that was likely penned by translator Robert Graves himself. It also explains why certain poets, like John Keats, seem to dominate older anthologies—a reflection of historical publishing trends. You can learn more about how certain poems became literary mainstays.

No matter how strange the source, your goal is always transparency. Give your reader enough information to follow your trail, and you'll have crafted a successful and ethical citation.

Common Questions About Citing Poems

Even with clear guidelines, poetry citation can throw some curveballs. You'll inevitably run into weird situations that leave you scratching your head. This section is all about tackling those tricky spots, offering quick, practical answers to the questions I see pop up most often.

Let's clear up the confusion so you can get back to writing.

What Should I Do with Epigraphs?

An epigraph—that short, introductory quote at the beginning of a book or chapter—is a powerful literary tool. But citing one is a little different. Since the epigraph isn't part of the main text you're analyzing, you have to cite it as it appears in the work you are holding, not from its original source.

Your Works Cited or Bibliography entry should be for the book you're actually reading. Then, in your essay, you can simply explain its context. For instance, you could write, "The novel opens with a poignant epigraph from Emily Dickinson's poetry..." Your in-text citation then points to the novel in your hand, not Dickinson's original collection.

How Do I Cite a Poem Quoted in Another Book?

This happens all the time in academic writing. You find a brilliant line from a poem quoted in a critical essay, but you haven't read the original poem yourself. This is known as citing a secondary source.

The golden rule here is transparency. You have to show your reader exactly where you found the quote. In MLA, the go-to for this is the phrase "qtd. in" (which stands for "quoted in").

An in-text citation would look like this:

(Frost, qtd. in Smith 45)

On your Works Cited page, you only list the source you actually read—in this case, Smith's book. This tells your professor that you’re working with Smith’s interpretation of Frost’s poem, which is honest and accurate.

What if the Poem Has No Line Numbers?

While most modern poetry editions include line numbers, you’ll definitely stumble across older books or online versions that don't. When this happens, you just fall back to the next best locator you have available.

• For MLA: Use the page number. It's a good idea to add "p." to avoid any confusion: (Yeats, p. 24).
• For APA: Page numbers are already the standard here, so you’d just cite as usual: (Yeats, 1921, p. 24).
• For Chicago: The page number would simply appear in your footnote as it normally would.

The goal is always to guide your reader as precisely as possible with the information you have.

Why Is Representational Diversity in Citations Important?

The poems we choose to analyze and elevate in our writing have a real cultural impact. When you look at citation patterns in popular culture—like weddings, eulogies, and films—they often reveal a stark imbalance. Research shows that the most-referenced poems tend to come from a canon of white poets, which leaves less room for diverse voices to be heard.

While poets of color like Langston Hughes have thankfully gained more recognition, they're still cited less frequently, which directly influences their visibility in our shared literary landscape. For a deeper dive, check out the great work being done on poetry citation and cultural representation on BookRiot.com.

Citing a wider range of poets is more than an academic exercise; it's an act of cultural stewardship. It actively broadens the literary conversation and ensures a richer, more representative tapestry of voices is heard and valued.

By choosing which poems to include in your work, you can help shine a light on underrepresented artists and bring fresh perspectives to your readers. The length of your paper also matters; longer essays give you more space to explore multiple works and voices. For more on that, take a look at our guide on how many words an essay should be.

By getting comfortable with these common challenges, you can handle almost any citation curveball, ensuring your work is not just accurate, but also thoughtful and ethically sound.

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