Cite quoted material that is incorporated into the text with the word "line" or "lines" and the line number of the poem that the quoted material came from. Place the citation after the quoted material and end quote, but before the sentence's concluding punctuation mark. Enclose it in parentheses, as in the following example:
In "Lady Lazarus," Sylvia Plath mythologizes herself as a phoenix by declaring "Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair" (line 9).
Omit the word "line" or "lines" from parenthetical citations of succeeding material quoted from the same poem and only cite the line number. The initial use of the word "line" or "lines" establishes that the numbers used to cite that particular poem designates lines. For example, if the previous example was not the first time you quoted Plath's "Lady Lazarus" in the essay, your parenthetical citation would look as follows: (9)
Place a parenthetical citation for quoted material that is set off from the text, or indented, after the concluding punctuation mark. Make one space between the punctuation mark and the parenthetical citation.
Cite material quoted from commonly used classical poems by division, such as book or part, and line number, separating the division number from the line number with a period. Parenthetical citations for these types of works also require the appropriate abbreviation for the work, such as "Od." for Homer's "Odyssey," which is placed before the division and line numbers. For example, a parenthetical citation for material quoted from the "Odyssey" would look as follows: (Od. 7.126). This tells the reader that the quoted material comes from book 7, line 126 of the "Odyssey."