How to Quote a Poem

How to Quote a Poem

When you discuss a short poem, you should usually quote the whole text of the poem at the beginning of your paper, with its lines numbered. Then you can refer to it with ease, and your instructor can follow you without having to juggle a book. Ask your instructor, however, whether he or she prefers the full text to be quoted this way. Quoted to illustrate some point, memorable lines can add interest to your paper. Good commentators on poetry tend to be apt quoters, helping their readers to experience a word, a phrase, a line, or a passage that otherwise might be neglected. Quoting poetry accurately, however, raises certain difficulties you don’t face in quoting prose.

If you are quoting fewer than four lines of poetry, you should transform the line arrangement into prose form, separating each line by a space, diagonal (/), and a space. The diagonal (/) indicates the writer's respect for where the poet's lines begin and end. Do not change the poet's capitalization or punctuation. Be sure to identify the line numbers you are quoting, as follows:

The color white preoccupies Frost. The spider is “fat and white / On a white heal-all” (1-2), and even the victim moth is pale, too.

There are also lines to think about-important and meaningful units whose shape you will need to preserve. If you are quoting four or more lines, it is good policy to arrange the lines that you are quoting just as they occur in the poem, white space and all, and to identify the line numbers you are quoting. In general, follow these rules:

1.  Indent the quotation one inch, or ten spaces, from the left-hand margin.

2.  Double-space between the quoted lines.

3.  Type the poem exactly as it appears in the original; you do not need to use quotation marks.

1. Cite the line numbers you are quoting in parentheses.

Example:

At the outset, the poet tells us of his discovery of

a dimpled spider, fat and white,

On a white heal-all, holding up a moth

Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth-

Assorted characters of death and blight (1-4)

and implies that the small killer is both childlike and sinister.

When you are beginning the quotation in the middle of a line of verse, position your starting word as closely as possible to where it occurs in the poem (as in the above example) – not at the left-hand margin.

If a line you are quoting is too long to fit on one line, you should indent it one-quarter inch, or three spaces, as follows:

What had that flower to do with being

white,

The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?

What brought the kindred spider to that

height,

Then steered the white moth thither in the

night? (9-12)

If you omit words from the lines you quote, indicate the omission with an ellipsis ( ... ), as in the following example:

The color white preoccupies Frost in his description of the spider “fat and white, / On a white heal-all . .. / Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth” (1-3).

There's no need for an ellipsis, if the lines you are quoting go right to the end of a sentence in the original, or if it is obvious that only a phrase is being quoted.

The speaker says that he -found a dimpled spider, and he goes on to portray it as a kite-flying boy.

If you leave out whole lines of verse, indicate the omission by a line of spaced periods about the length of a line of the poem you are quoting.

Maybe, she hints, when things in the universe drop below a certain size, they pass completely out of the Designer's notice:

The midge spins out to safety

Through the spider's rope;

……………………………………

In a netted universe

Wing-spread is peril. (1-2, 11-12)

Source: Kennedy. 2160-2162