Dr. Bordelon's Introduction to Poetry

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Citations

Sigh.

It's always always a bit of a drudge citing sources. 

Let's just get right to it so that you can get back to reading and thinking and writing. 

A quick head's up on formatting conventions: 

  • "Quotes Are Used for Poems Titles (and Short Stories and Essays)." 
  • Italics are Used for Titles of Books, Newspapers, Magazines. 
In-Text Citations | Work Cited Entries | Punctuation When Citing Sources

In-Text Citation

For in-text citations, the convention in poetry is that you just include the line number for your primary source.  If there's any chance of confusion, include the author's name in a phrase before the quote itself.

As an aristocratic Roman, Catullus was well aware of the power of money.  Thus he aligns it with love by using its language, "penny," "bankrupt," and "assets," to convey his disdain for financial capital over the charms of his lover (2, 11).

And from a paragraph on Li Po's "The Solitude of Night"

This idea is displayed in the poem when the speaker awakens after falling asleep during a party, stating “And there remained but a few of my comrades” (6).

In this next example, note how well Tyler sets up this quote:

A common challenge to the existence of god is: why is there evil in the world if there is an omnipotent being watching over it?  In “The Tyger” Blake’s speaker ponders this question when he asks, “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” (20).

In all instances, note the placement of the period -- behind the parenthetical citation.

Work Cited

The work cited entries for the quotes above would read as follows:

Catullus, Gaius Valerius.  “5.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature, edited by Sarah Lawall and Maynard Mack, W.W. Norton, 2002, pp. 1047.

Po, Li.  “The Solitude of Night.” Handout, Introduction to Poetry, edited by David Bordelon, 2018 pp. 6.

Blake, William.  “The Tyger.”  The Norton Introduction to Poetry, edited by Paul J. Hunter, Alison Booth, and Kelly J. Mays, W.W. Norton, 2007, pp. 56.

Note hanging indent, italics, etc. Page numbers and editors may be different for particular editions: your results will vary.  Check your own textbook for specifics.

For more information on citation with many more examples, see the Perdue OWL citing sources link.

 Punctuation with Citations

For punctuation with citations, see this link.


© David Bordelon 2015