When you cite a poem in the body of the text, the quoted section has to be clearly marked. The exact format depends on whether you are quoting a long or short section of the poem. If the quotation is under 40 words, include it in your text with quotation marks at the beginning and end. Each line of the poem should be separated by a slash. If it is longer, it should be its own paragraph, indented 1/2 inch from the main text for the first line and a further 1/2 inch for subsequent lines. Each line of the quotation should correspond to a line of the poem. In either case, the quotation should be followed by a citation in parentheses that lists the name of the author and the date of the poem.
The parenthetical citation directs your reader to the poem's entry in your works cited section. The exact form this entry takes depends on the publication in which the poem appeared. The basic format for books gives the last name and initials of the author followed by the year of publication in parentheses, with a period after it. A poem is normally cited as a section from a book. A typical poem citation might appear as follows: Author, A. (2011). Poem Title. Title of book (pp. 5-6). Place: Publisher. The book's title should be italicized.
Sources other than books often contain poetry. If you need to cite a poem that first appeared in a journal or magazine, you will use a slightly different reference format. The author or authors and date appear just as they would for a book, as does the title of the poem. A typical reference might appear as follows: Author, A. (2011). Poem Title. Journal Title, 89, pp. 5-6. The journal title and the volume number should be in italics.
In recent years, electronic media have become more and more important in academic writing. Therefore, the APA style also covers material originally published online. For online periodicals, the first section of the reference is the same as that for a print periodical. Instead of a page number, however, the reference ends with "Retrieved from" followed by the URL of the poem. For a web document that is not a periodical, the format is the same as a book, with the "Retrieved from" section replacing the publisher and location.