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How to Cite a Poem: MLA & APA Formats With Examples
Citing a poem is simple once you know one rule: quote by line numbers, not page numbers, and build the entry around the container the poem lives in — a book, an anthology, or a website. MLA is the default style for literature papers; APA is used in the social sciences. This guide covers the in-text citation and the entry format for both styles, with real examples for famous poems, plus the block-quote rules that trip up most students.
Which Style Should You Use?
Ask your instructor first, because the styles are not interchangeable. A quick orientation:
- MLA (Modern Language Association): the standard for English, literature, and the humanities. Author-page for prose, but for poems you cite author and line number.
- APA (American Psychological Association): the standard for psychology, education, and the social sciences. Author-date in the text, and line numbers only when the source prints them.
Everything below assumes you are quoting from a poem that has numbered lines, which most published collections do. When in doubt about a detail, the official handbooks are the MLA Handbook (9th edition) and the APA Publication Manual (7th edition).
MLA In-Text Citation: Author + Line Numbers
In MLA, when you quote a poem you give the author's name and the line number in parentheses — never the page number — because a poem appears identically in many editions and only the lines stay stable across all of them.
If you name the poet in your sentence, put just the line numbers in parentheses:
Frost opens with a traveler facing a choice: "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" (line 1).
If you do not name the poet in the sentence, add the last name:
The speaker calls his choice "the one less traveled by" (Frost, lines 19–20).
Two refinements matter. Write line for a single line, lines for more than one, and after your first parenthetical reference, drop the word — later citations are just (19–20). When quoting several lines from the same poem in one paragraph, cite them once at the end of the passage.
MLA Works Cited: Three Common Situations
The Works Cited entry names the poet first, then the poem title in quotation marks, then the container. Here are the three formats you will use most often.
A poem in a single-author collection
Frost, Robert. "The Road Not Taken." The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969, pp. 105–106.
Order: poet. "Poem title." Book title, editor if any, publisher, year, page range of the poem.
A poem in an anthology
Shakespeare, William. "Sonnet 18." The Norton Anthology of Poetry, edited by Margaret Ferguson et al., 6th ed., W. W. Norton, 2018, pp. 246–247.
The anthology becomes the container: its editors, edition, publisher, and pages. The poem's original date (1609) does not appear in MLA Works Cited unless it matters to your argument.
A poem on a website
Frost, Robert. "The Road Not Taken." Poetry Foundation, 2026, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken.
Order: poet. "Poem title." Website name, publication date if shown, URL. Remove the https:// prefix in MLA, and leave off the access date unless your instructor requires it.
Block Quoting Poetry in MLA
Quote three or more lines of poetry and MLA forces a block quote. Set it off from your text, indent the whole quote half an inch, keep the poet's line breaks, and drop the quotation marks:
Frost frames the choice as permanent:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. (19–20)
Introduce the block with a full sentence and a colon, keep double spacing, and put the line-number citation after the final period. If you quote two lines or fewer, stay inline and mark the break with a forward slash with a space on each side: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by" (lines 18–19).
APA In-Text Citation: Author + Date
APA treats a poem as a source like any other: author and year in parentheses, with a page or line number for direct quotes — and since most collections lack line numbers, that usually means pages.
Frost (1916) describes a traveler stopped at a fork in a yellow wood.
The traveler later claims his choice "has made all the difference" (Frost, 1916, p. 105).
APA uses the original publication year of the poem when you know it, followed by the year of the edition you used: (Frost, 1916/1969, p. 105). If a source prints line numbers, cite them as (Frost, 1916/1969, lines 19–20) — the word lines prevents confusion with page numbers.
APA Reference List: Book and Website Examples
APA entries use the author's surname and initials, the year in parentheses, sentence case for titles, and the publisher or site name. Note that in APA the poem title is in sentence case — only the first word and proper nouns are capitalized.
A poem in a single-author collection
Frost, R. (1969). The road not taken. In E. C. Lathem (Ed.), The poetry of Robert Frost (pp. 105–106). Holt, Rinehart and Winston. (Original work published 1916)
A poem on a website
Frost, R. (1916). The road not taken. Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken
APA wants the full https:// URL with no period at the end, so readers can copy it cleanly. If the site shows no date for the poem, use (n.d.) and add a retrieval date only if the page could change.
Quoting Poetry in APA: Slashes and Blocks
APA follows the same slash-and-block logic as MLA with different thresholds. Fewer than forty words: keep the quote in your sentence, and mark line breaks with a forward slash surrounded by spaces. Forty or more words: set the quote as a block, indented half an inch, with the poet's line breaks intact and no quotation marks.
Frost (1916/1969) ends the poem with the traveler's quiet boast:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. (p. 106)
Because APA line numbers are rare in practice, cite the page number for block quotes unless your source prints lines. Either way, the period goes before the parenthetical citation in APA block quotes — the reverse of MLA.
Common Citation Mistakes
- Using page numbers in MLA poetry citations. Line numbers are the MLA rule for poems; pages are the fallback only when lines are absent.
- Dropping the word lines in APA. A bare (19–20) looks like pages. APA requires (lines 19–20) whenever lines are cited.
- Italicizing short poems. "The Road Not Taken" takes quotation marks; only book-length works like Paradise Lost are italicized.
- Forgetting the second container. A poem inside an anthology inside a database needs the anthology and the database listed in MLA.
- Punctuating block quotes wrong. MLA puts the citation after the period; APA puts the period before the citation. Getting it backwards is the most common deduction on poetry papers.
- Quoting from memory. Always copy from the actual text you cite; slight wording differences between editions will sink a close reading.
MLA vs. APA at a Glance
| Question | MLA (9th ed.) | APA (7th ed.) |
|---|---|---|
| In-text citation | (Author, lines 1–2) | (Author, 1916, p. 105) or (lines 19–20) |
| Line vs. page numbers | Line numbers always, when available | Pages by default; lines only if printed |
| Poem title format | Quotation marks; book title italicized | Sentence case in quotation marks; container italicized |
| Block quote threshold | 3 or more lines | 40 or more words |
| URL style | No https:// prefix | Full https:// URL |
| Typical field | Literature and humanities | Social sciences and education |
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I cite poems by page number or line number?
Line numbers whenever the poem has them. MLA uses line numbers in parentheses after a quote, and APA adds them only when the source prints them. Use page numbers only for poems printed without line numbers, such as a short poem embedded in an article.
How do I cite a poem I found online?
Treat the website as the container. In MLA, list the poet, the poem title in quotation marks, the site name in italics, the publisher if different, and the URL. In APA, list the poet, the year of the original or site publication, the poem title in sentence case, the site name, and the URL.
Are poem titles italicized or put in quotation marks?
Short poems go in quotation marks, like a short story or article. Long works published on their own — an epic such as Paradise Lost or a book-length poem — are italicized, like a book title.
What if the poem has no line numbers?
Cite the page number instead. When neither line numbers nor pages exist, as on many websites, name the author and poem in your sentence and give no parenthetical reference, which tells readers the source is the whole work.
How do I quote more than three lines of poetry?
Set it as a block quote. In MLA, quote three or more lines as a block indented half an inch, keeping the poet's line breaks. In APA, the threshold is forty or more words. Block quotes skip quotation marks and keep the original line breaks.
Which citation style do English classes require?
MLA is the default for literature and the humanities, so most poetry papers use it. APA is standard in psychology, education, and the social sciences. Ask your instructor when an assignment could go either way.
One Last Check Before You Submit
Run your finished citations through three questions: Is every quote attached to a parenthetical with line or page numbers? Does every in-text citation have a matching entry in Works Cited or References? And does every title wear the right punctuation — quotation marks for the poem, italics for its container? If yes, you have the citation half of a poetry paper solved, leaving your energy for the reading itself. To quote a poem well you first have to understand it, and the poem analysis guide walks through speaker, imagery, and sound in plain English. New to poetry terms like enjambment or caesura? The poetry glossary has quick definitions. And once a poem earns a place in your paper, the same poem is worth meeting aloud — see our tips for reading poems out loud. If you are still deciding what counts as poetry in the first place, start with our plain-English answer to what poetry is, complete with famous examples.