Do I cite line numbers or page numbers for a poem in MLA?

Use line numbers only when the poem is longer than a page and the copy prints line or part numbers. Use pages when a long poem has no printed line numbers. For a short poem on one page or one web page, cite no number in the parenthetical—the works-cited entry already locates it. See the MLA Style Center’s three-way rule (29 February 2016).

Can I count the lines myself if my anthology does not number them?

No. MLA cites explicit numbers only. Counting silently creates a locator no reader of that edition can verify. Use page numbers for a long unnumbered print poem, or no locator for a short poem.

How do I quote two or three lines of poetry in MLA?

Keep the lines in your sentence, in quotation marks, and mark each line break with a space-slash-space. A stanza break is a space-double-slash-space (MLA 9 §6.37). Four or more lines become a block quotation with the original line breaks and no surrounding quotation marks.

How do I cite a poem from the Poetry Foundation in MLA 9?

Cite the poet, the poem title in quotation marks, Poetry Foundation as the container, and the URL you used. If the page names a print source and that is a second container you actually used (Collins’s “Forgetfulness” also appearing in Poetry, Jan. 1990), add that container. Do not invent a website year, and do not cite a print anthology you did not open. The Style Center’s Shelley “Matilda Gathering Flowers” entry is the official website-poem shape.

Are poem titles italicized in MLA?

Short poems take quotation marks, even on a website by themselves. Book-length poems (The Waste Land, Paradise Lost, Beowulf as a standalone translation) take italics. Untitled numbered poems use a plain description: Sonnet 30. Untitled first-line titles are quoted exactly as the source prints the line.

How do I cite a Shakespeare sonnet in MLA?

If you used one sonnet from an anthology, put Sonnet 30 (no quotation marks) in the Title of Source slot and cite that edition. If you quoted several sonnets from one collection, make one entry for the collection (the Riverside Sonnets example) and name each sonnet in the prose or parenthetical.

Does MLA 9 still use a 3-em dash for a second work by the same poet?

Yes. Handbook §5.126 still replaces a repeated identical name with three em dashes or three hyphens. The Style Center’s 10 June 2026 note says a later edition will prefer repeating the name for screen-reader access, and either form is acceptable now if your instructor does not object.

How do I cite a short story from The New Yorker in MLA?

If you read it on the magazine’s site, cite the author, story title in quotation marks, The New Yorker, the issue date, and the URL. Munro’s “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” is the 27 December 1999 issue. Add print pages only if you used the paginated issue. A later book appearance is a different container with that book’s pages.

How do I cite Beowulf or another anonymous poem?

If you read a standalone translation, italicize the title and name the translator: Beowulf. Translated by Seamus Heaney, W. W. Norton, 2000. In-text, use the italic title (Beowulf lines xx–xx). If the poem is a short work inside an anthology, quote the title and name the anthology.

How to Cite a Poem in MLA 9 (Line Numbers vs Pages) [2026]

How to Cite a Poem in MLA: Quick Answer

Start with the copy in front of you. A short poem or story inside a book, magazine, or site is the source; the larger work is the container. Put a short title in quotation marks and a book-length poem in italics. In the parenthetical, cite printed line or part numbers for a long numbered poem, pages for a long unnumbered print poem, and no number for a poem that fits on one page or one web page.

MLA 9 templates

Works cited — poem or story in a book:

Author. "Title of the Poem." Title of the Container, edited by Editor Name, Publisher, Year, p. xx.

Works cited — poem on a website:

Author. "Title of the Poem." Title of the Website, Publisher if different, Date if given, URL.

In-text — short poem (one page or one URL):

(Author) or (“Shortened Title”)

In-text — long numbered poem, first citation:

(Author, lines xx–xx)

In-text — later citations of that poem:

(xx–xx)

In-text — short story with pages:

(Author xx) — no comma before the page

Official MLA Style Center wording

When the source being documented forms part of a larger whole, the larger whole can be thought of as a container that holds the source. For example, a short story may be contained in an anthology. The short story is the source, and the anthology is the container.

The ultimate goal is to be concise and to cite what is most useful to the reader.

If the poem is short (no longer than a page or its online equivalent), do not cite any number in the text. The page number or web location that appears in the poem’s works-cited-list entry will be specific enough to identify a borrowing from such a short text.

If the poem is longer than a page (or its online equivalent) and is published with explicit numbers marking lines or other parts (e.g., stanzas, cantos, books), cite the line numbers and other part numbers but not page numbers. If lines alone are numbered, use the form “line 57” or “lines 119–20” in the first citation, and cite the line numbers alone, without the label line or lines, in the later citations.

If other parts are numbered as well as lines, combine the numbers without a label. For instance, if books and lines are numbered, “9.19” means book 9, line 19.

If the poem is longer than a page and is not published with explicit numbers marking lines or other parts, cite page numbers (as you would for a work in prose) if the poem is in print. If no page numbers are present (as is often the case online), none can be cited.

The container sentence is from Works Cited: A Quick Guide. The locator sentences are the three-way rule on What kind of number do I put in the parenthetical citation for a poem? (29 February 2016; still the public wording, with a see-the-ninth-edition note). The generated How to Cite a Poem in MLA page shows one empty shape. This guide is the decision tree around it.

Cite the Copy You Read, Not the Poem in the Abstract

“The Road Not Taken” in a 2024 anthology, on the Poetry Foundation site, and in an early Frost collection are three different sources. Before you format anything, answer three questions. The rest of the entry is the MLA core elements in order.

What physical or digital copy did you use? Cite that edition, website, or database—not a famous first printing you did not open.
Is the work a short poem, a book-length poem, or a prose story? Short poems and stories take quotation marks. A standalone epic or long poem takes italics, like a book.
What locator does this copy print? Line numbers only if the edition prints them. Never count lines yourself.

Line Numbers, Page Numbers, or Nothing

Classroom handouts often flatten this into “always cite lines.” The Style Center is stricter, and the rule is useful rather than decorative. Two myths follow from the quotations above. First, you do not invent line numbers by counting. If the margin is blank, the numbers do not exist for citation purposes. Second, a fourteen-line sonnet that fits on one anthology page usually needs no parenthetical number at all—the works-cited page already points to that page. Use line or lines (not the older ll.) only on the first citation of a numbered long poem; later citations drop the label.

Which number belongs in the MLA parenthetical for a poem
What you read	What the copy prints	In-text locator
Short poem (one page or one web page)	Anything, or nothing	No number — author or title only
Poem longer than a page	Printed line, stanza, canto, or book numbers	Those numbers, not pages; label `lines` once
Poem longer than a page	No printed line numbers	Page numbers in print; nothing online
Short story or other prose	Page numbers	(Author xx) with no comma

Quotation Marks or Italics?

MLA titles follow container logic plus a length-and-genre test. The Style Center’s note on styling titles of online works (18 December 2017) is the public wording:

Official MLA Style Center — title styling

To determine whether to style a work on a website in italics or quotation marks, you must consider the work’s length, genre, and context. Long works and works that are self-contained and independent are generally styled in italics. Short works and works that form part of a larger work are generally styled in quotation marks.

Poems–except for epic poems such as Paradise Lost–are usually styled in quotation marks, even if they are published by themselves on a website rather than as part of a collection:

Official website-poem example:

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Matilda Gathering Flowers." Poetry Foundation, 2017, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/92195/matilda-gathering-flowers.

That is why “Wild Geese” takes quotation marks inside Dream Work, while The Waste Land and Paradise Lost—published as books—take italics. A sonnet known only by its number is a description, not a title, so it is neither quoted nor italicized: Sonnet 30, not “Sonnet 30.”

MLA title styling for poems and short fiction
Work	How it was published	Title style
Lyric, sonnet, or short narrative poem	Inside a book, magazine, or site	Quotation marks
Untitled numbered poem	Sonnet, canto, or cycle number	Plain description: Sonnet 130
Untitled poem known by its first line	Style the line as the source prints it	Quotation marks around that first line
Epic or book-length poem	Issued as its own volume	Italics, like a book
Short story	Inside a collection, anthology, or magazine	Quotation marks

Works-Cited Template for a Poem or Story in a Container

Most student citations are a short work inside a book. Assemble the core elements in handbook order. Skip a slot that does not exist rather than writing “n.d.” or inventing an editor.

MLA 9 slot order

Author. "Title of the Poem or Story." Title of the Container, contributed by Editor or Translator, version, number, Publisher, date, location.

Poem in a Single-Author Collection

If every poem in the book is by the same poet, start with that poet and treat the collection as the container. Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” is on page 14 of Dream Work (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986)—the 1986 table of contents, not a magazine first appearance that citation blogs still invent.

Works cited — poem in the poet’s own collection

Oliver, Mary. "Wild Geese." Dream Work, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986, p. 14.

If you quote several poems or essays from the same collection, the MLA Style Center prefers one entry for the book and page numbers in the text. Create a separate entry for a single poem only when that poem is the only work you use. When a single-author collection also names an editor, add by plus the author after the book title so readers do not mistake the volume for a multi-author anthology.

Official MLA Style Center — one author, edited collection

Note that in the example above, “by Benjamin” appears after the title of the collection so that the reader will know that all the contributions are by the same author. Otherwise, since the collection has an editor, the reader might assume that various authors contributed to the work, unless the title of the work (e.g., The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe) makes the authorship clear.

Whole collection (several pieces):

Benjamin, Walter. Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writing, edited by Peter Demetz, translated by Edmund Jephcott, Schocken Books, 1978.

One work from that collection:

Benjamin, Walter. "One-Way Street (Selection)." Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writing, by Benjamin, edited by Peter Demetz, translated by Edmund Jephcott, Schocken Books, 1978, pp. 61–94.

Poem in an Anthology

Name the poet first, then the poem, then the anthology as container, then the editor. Numbered poems that readers find in any edition—Shakespeare’s sonnets, Spenser’s Amoretti—can put the number in the Title of Source slot. The Style Center’s 10 September 2025 note on numbered poems in anthologies uses this official pair:

Works cited — official MLA examples

Shakespeare shows how memories of grief and loss can all too easily dominate “the sessions of sweet silent thought” if not counterbalanced by the recollection of joy.

Shakespeare, William. Sonnet 30. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, M. H. Abrams, general editor, 6th ed., vol. 1, W. W. Norton, 1993, p. 812.

In sonnet 75, the poet vows to immortalize his love by writing it “in the heavens” (Spenser 737).

Spenser, Edmund. Excerpt from Amoretti. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, M. H. Abrams, general editor, 6th ed., vol. 1, W. W. Norton, 1993, pp. 734–38.

The Shakespeare entry has no quotation marks around Sonnet 30 because the number is the conventional name, not a title the poet printed. The Spenser entry cites an excerpt of a cycle; individual sonnets can then be named in your prose (“In sonnet 75…”) while the parenthetical points at the anthology page if that is the most useful locator. Page 812 in the 6th Norton is not page 812 in a later edition—copy the volume you held.

Untitled Poems Known Only by Number

The same numbering system works when you are writing about a whole sonnet sequence. The Style Center’s example for an untitled poem known by its number puts the description in the source slot and can add a second container for the database:

Prose + works cited — MLA Style Center

Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 is an anti-Petrarchan poem, negating the conventions of love poetry Petrarch had made popular. It begins with an unflattering comparison: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” (line 1).

Shakespeare, William. Sonnet 130. The Complete Sonnets and Poems, by Shakespeare, edited by Colin Burrow, Oxford UP, 2002, p. 641. Oxford Scholarly Editions Online, doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198184317.book.1.

Notice by Shakespeare after the collection title—the same “by Author” signal as the Benjamin example. The book has an editor, but every poem is still Shakespeare’s.

Untitled Poems Known by Their First Line

If the poem has no title and is known by its first line, style that line the way the source prints it—in the sentence and in the works-cited list. The Style Center’s first-line title note (19 January 2018) uses Dickinson on the Poetry Foundation:

Official MLA Style Center — first-line title

Dickinson’s poem “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—” contrasts the everyday and the momentous.

Dickinson, Emily. "I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—." Poetry Foundation, 2017, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45703/i-heard-a-fly-buzz-when-i-died-591.

More Than One Sonnet from a Sequence

If you quote several numbered sonnets from one collection, do not make a separate works-cited entry for each sonnet. Identify the sonnet in your prose or parenthetical, and cite the collection once. The Style Center’s sonnet-sequence note (30 August 2018) is the official pair:

Official MLA Style Center — several sonnets, one collection

As always, when you are citing a work contained in a larger work, you must identify the particular work you are citing. Thus, if you are citing more than one sonnet from a sequence of sonnets, include the word sonnet and the sonnet’s number in your prose or parenthetically and create one works-cited-list entry for the entire collection of sonnets.

In sonnet 137 William Shakespeare asks Love, “[W]hat dost thou to mine eyes, / That they behold and see not what they see?” (lines 1–2), and he speaks of a “perjur’d eye” in sonnet 152 (line 13).

In his Sonnets, William Shakespeare asks Love, “[W]hat dost thou to mine eyes, / That they behold and see not what they see?” (sonnet 137, lines 1–2), and he later speaks of a “perjur’d eye” (sonnet 152, line 13).

Shakespeare, William. Sonnets. The Riverside Shakespeare, edited by G. Blakemore Evans et al., 4th ed., vol. 2, Houghton Mifflin, 1974, pp. 1745–80.

Because the sonnets are sequenced numerically, the Style Center says page numbers in the parenthetical are unnecessary (though not incorrect). That is the opposite of the anthology-page locator in the Spenser example: use the locator that helps a reader of your copy.

When Line Numbers Restart in Each Section

Some long poems restart line numbering at each book, canto, or sonnet. Citing “line 2” then becomes useless. The Style Center’s section-numbers note (17 April 2018) asks you to give the section and the line:

Official MLA Style Center — restarting line numbers

As Wordsworth writes in his series of sonnets The River Duddon, “Child of the clouds! remote from every taint / Of sordid industry thy lot is cast” (sec. 2, lines 1-2).

Wordsworth, William. Excerpt from The River Duddon. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period, edited by William Heath, Macmillan, 1973, pp. 391-92.

That parenthetical is official wording, including the hyphen in 1-2. If books and lines are numbered together, the three-way rule still prefers the compact form 9.19 once both parts are numbered.

Two Versions of the Same Poem

Literary essays often compare texts, not just “the poem.” Dickinson’s “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—” exists in a version published in 1859 and in an 1861 text she sent to Thomas W. Higginson. The Style Center’s guidance on two versions in one anthology puts the version year in the optional-element slot after the title, not after the author’s name, and uses the MLA 9 §5.126 dash for the repeated author:

Works cited — two Dickinson texts (official Style Center form)

Dickinson, Emily. "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—." 1859. Poetry: An Introduction, edited by Michael Meyer, 2nd ed., Bedford Books, 1998, p. 261.

---. "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—." 1861. Poetry: An Introduction, edited by Michael Meyer, 2nd ed., Bedford Books, 1998, p. 262.

In-text, first unique element in brackets:

("Safe" [1859])

In-text, other version:

("Safe" [1861])

Official MLA Style Center — repeated author names

According to the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook, three em dashes or three hyphens can take the place of identical names in consecutive works-cited-list entries (sec. 5.126), but using dashes and hyphens in that way can cause accessibility issues for users of screen readers and other assistive technologies.

You are welcome to use either style—using dashes or hyphens, or writing out all names in full—in advance of the next handbook edition, as long as your instructor doesn’t object to your deviating from the guidance published in the ninth edition.

That is the 10 June 2026 Style Center note. MLA 9 still prints the dash. A later handbook will prefer the repeated name. If you repeat the name now, say so only if your instructor has asked for the accessible form. If the 1861 text is unpublished correspondence, say so in your prose; the year alone does not tell that story.

Book-Length Poems and Translations

When the poem is the book, italicize the title and drop the extra container. The first book form of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land was issued by Boni and Liveright in New York in December 1922 (Gallup A6a)—not “Horace Liveright” as a publisher name. Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf is a translation of an anonymous Old English poem, so the title leads and the translator follows as a contributor—not “Beowulf” in quotation marks, which would treat the epic as a short work inside a book you have not named.

Works cited — standalone poem and translated epic

Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. Boni and Liveright, 1922.

Beowulf. Translated by Seamus Heaney, W. W. Norton, 2000.

In-text template (anonymous titled translation):

(Beowulf lines xx–xx) on first reference if your edition numbers lines, then (Beowulf xx–xx).

If you name Heaney in the sentence because you are discussing the translation, the parenthetical can carry only the locator. Do not invent line numbers the edition never printed. For reprints versus new editions versus translations, use the reprinted and translated works guide.

Poems in Magazines and on Poetry Websites

Cite the file you had on screen. Billy Collins’s “Forgetfulness” is widely—and wrongly—handed around as a 1995 New Yorker poem. It appeared in Poetry in January 1990 and is archived on the Poetry Foundation site that republishes the magazine; the Foundation page itself credits the January 1990 issue. If the website is what you read, the website is a container. Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” is on the same site, from And Still I Rise (1978). If that page is what you opened, do not cite a 1978 print collection you never held.

Works cited — periodical poem and website poem

Collins, Billy. "Forgetfulness." Poetry, Jan. 1990. Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/37695/forgetfulness.

Angelou, Maya. "Still I Rise." Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46446/still-i-rise.

Prefer a library edition or a site that names its print source—Poetry Foundation, Poets.org, a publisher page, or a database with a DOI—over an unsourced blog transcription. MLA 9 allows the URL; include https:// unless you are copying an official example that still uses the older www. form. An access date is optional unless the page has no publication date and your instructor wants one. Do not invent a website year because a libguide once typed 2020.

Where the Original Publication Date Goes

If the original year matters to the argument—first magazine appearance, a restored 1859 text, a poem later collected—MLA puts that year after the title of the source, as an optional element, then continues with the container you used. It does not go after the author’s name. The Dickinson 1859/1861 entries above are the model. A “1855” after Whitman and before “Song of Myself” would be the old error in the other direction: the date follows the title of the poem or book you are dating.

How to Cite a Short Story in MLA

A short story uses the same container template as a short poem, but the locator is almost always a page number, because stories are prose. Do not switch to line numbers unless you are quoting a story that prints them (rare). If the story sits on one web page with no pagination, the author (or title) is enough in the parenthetical. The Style Center’s title-styling note states the quotation-mark rule for stories in the same words it uses for short poems:

Official MLA Style Center — story titles

A story is generally considered a short work and often published as part of a collection or in a magazine, so it too is styled in quotation marks:

Story in a magazine you read online

Alice Munro’s “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” first appeared in the 27 December 1999 issue of The New Yorker and remains on the magazine’s site (the issue URL uses 1999/12/27; the page currently shows a 20 December 1999 display date). If that page is what you read, cite the site. Do not guess the print pagination of a double issue you never held.

Works cited — magazine story from the publisher’s site

Munro, Alice. "The Bear Came Over the Mountain." The New Yorker, 27 Dec. 1999, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/12/27/the-bear-came-over-the-mountain.

Story in a collection or anthology

If you used Munro’s later book appearance, cite Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage and the pages in that edition. If you used a classroom anthology, cite the anthology editor and the page span printed there. The story title stays in quotation marks; the book title is italic. That is the same pattern the anthology guide teaches for essays and chapters—this page adds the poetry-specific locator and quoting rules that anthology chapter does not cover.

Template — story in an edited anthology

Author. "Title of the Story." Title of the Anthology, edited by Editor Name, edition, Publisher, year, pp. xx–xx.

How to Quote Poetry in MLA

Citing the poem and quoting the poem are different jobs. The MLA Handbook, 9th edition, treats verse quotations in 6.36–6.38 (short run-in quotations, then block quotations) and omitted lines in 6.61. Skyline College’s MLA 9 quoting notes reprint the handbook pointer that two slashes mark a stanza break in a run-in quotation (6.37). The Style Center’s note on stanza breaks (31 January 2019) still gives the cleanest classroom examples. That post cites the eighth-edition section 1.3.3; the slash and block rules themselves are what MLA 9 kept.

One to three lines: run the verse into your sentence in quotation marks. Mark a line break with a slash and a space on each side ( / ). Mark a stanza break with two slashes ( // ).
Four or more lines: set a block quotation, indented half an inch, with the original lineation and no quotation marks around the block.
In a block quote, stanza breaks are blank lines, not // . Keep unusual spacing if the poem uses it.

Official MLA Style Center — three lines or fewer

When quoting poetry in your prose (i.e., when quoting three lines or fewer), use a double slash to indicate a stanza break, as described in section 1.3.3 of the MLA Handbook:

“Since here the mournful seal was set / By love and agony! // Temple and tower have mouldered” (lines 3–5).

Hemans, Felicia. "The Image in Lava." The Poetical Works of Mrs. Felicia Hemans, Grigg and Elliot, 1843, p. 318.

Purdue OWL restates the same classroom split: slashes for a short verse quotation, a half-inch indented block for four or more lines, and a line of spaced periods when you omit a full line from a block. Reproduce the poem’s capitalization and punctuation. If you omit a full line from a block quotation, the handbook (6.61) wants a line of spaced ellipsis points approximately the length of the missing line—not a three-dot ellipsis in the middle of a run-in slash sequence unless you are omitting words inside one line. For the difference between quoting, paraphrasing, and patchwriting, see paraphrasing versus quoting.

In-Text Citations That Match the Edition

Once the works-cited entry is honest about the copy, the parenthetical only has to point inside it. Use the poet’s name if it is not already in the sentence. Add a locator only when the table above says you have one.

In-text patterns

Numbered long poem, first citation (official Style Center locator)

The opening comparison is already a refusal: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” (Shakespeare, line 1).

Later citations of the same poem

The volta lands on ordinary breath: “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare” (13).

Short poem on one page or one URL

Oliver’s speaker places the reader “in the family of things” (“Wild Geese”).

Book and line numbers together (official Style Center form)

A citation such as (9.19) means book 9, line 19—no extra label.

Section that restarts its line numbers (official Style Center form)

(sec. 2, lines 1-2)

Short story on an unpaginated magazine page

Grant watches Fiona’s new attachment without a vocabulary for it (Munro).

The Munro example has no page because the cited copy is the unpaginated New Yorker page. If you used a paged book, write (Munro xx) only when xx is a page printed in that edition—never a number you remember from another printing. Plays use act, scene, and line instead of this poem logic; that system lives in the MLA play guide.

Mistakes That Quietly Fail a Literature Paper

Counting lines the edition never printed. MLA cites explicit numbers only.
Italicizing a short poem. “Daddy,” “Wild Geese,” and “Still I Rise” take quotation marks. The Waste Land, Paradise Lost, and Beowulf take italics.
Putting the original year after the author. It follows the title: “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—.” 1859.
Using `ll.` or a comma before a page number. First verse citation: (Heaney, lines xx–xx). Prose: (Author 227), never (Author, 227).
Quoting four lines with slashes. That length is a block quote.
Citing a blog transcription of a poem you could have taken from Poetry Foundation, a library ebook, or the assigned anthology.
*Treating Beowulf as a short quoted title* when you read Heaney’s standalone translation.
Copying a works-cited entry for a Norton edition you did not use. Page 812 in the 6th edition is not page 812 in the 10th.
Calling the 3-em dash an MLA 8 leftover. MLA 9 §5.126 still uses it; repeating the name is the optional accessible form the Style Center now also allows.
*Naming the Waste Land publisher “Horace Liveright.”* The 1922 book imprint is Boni and Liveright.
Making one works-cited entry per sonnet when you quoted several from the same Riverside or Oxford collection.

What the Generic Poem Template Does Not Decide

The site’s How to Cite a Poem in MLA page is the generated source-by-style template: one sample entry, the shared MLA slot list, and cross-links to other styles. Use it when you need the empty shape. Use this guide when the hard part is choosing among containers, locators, title styles, and verse quotations. The play guide is act.scene.line and performance citations. The literature citation guide is the wider MLA-or-Chicago field map. Come back here for lineation.

Official References

Works Cited: A Quick Guide — containers, including the short-story-in-an-anthology example
What kind of number do I put in the parenthetical citation for a poem? — 29 February 2016
How do I cite numbered poems from an anthology? — 10 September 2025
Untitled poems known by number
Untitled poems known by first line
More than one sonnet from a sequence
Line numbers that restart each section
Two versions of a poem in the same anthology
Stanza breaks in quotations
Styling titles of online works — short poems versus Paradise Lost
One poem from a single-author collection
Repeated author names and accessibility — MLA 9 §5.126 and the 10 June 2026 note
Purdue OWL: MLA Formatting Quotations
MLA Handbook, 9th ed., Modern Language Association of America, 2021, especially 5.126 (repeated authors), 6.22 (verse works), 6.36–6.38 (quoting poetry), and 6.61 (omitted lines)

Format the entry from the copy you used

The poem generator asks for poet, title, collection, editor, and pages. It will not invent line numbers. For a one-off MLA entry, the style picker on the homepage works too.

MLA poem citation generator Open the MLA generator

Frequently asked questions

Do I cite line numbers or page numbers for a poem in MLA?: Use line numbers only when the poem is longer than a page and the copy prints line or part numbers. Use pages when a long poem has no printed line numbers. For a short poem on one page or one web page, cite no number in the parenthetical—the works-cited entry already locates it. See the MLA Style Center’s three-way rule (29 February 2016).
Can I count the lines myself if my anthology does not number them?: No. MLA cites explicit numbers only. Counting silently creates a locator no reader of that edition can verify. Use page numbers for a long unnumbered print poem, or no locator for a short poem.
How do I quote two or three lines of poetry in MLA?: Keep the lines in your sentence, in quotation marks, and mark each line break with a space-slash-space. A stanza break is a space-double-slash-space (MLA 9 §6.37). Four or more lines become a block quotation with the original line breaks and no surrounding quotation marks.
How do I cite a poem from the Poetry Foundation in MLA 9?: Cite the poet, the poem title in quotation marks, Poetry Foundation as the container, and the URL you used. If the page names a print source and that is a second container you actually used (Collins’s “Forgetfulness” also appearing in Poetry, Jan. 1990), add that container. Do not invent a website year, and do not cite a print anthology you did not open. The Style Center’s Shelley “Matilda Gathering Flowers” entry is the official website-poem shape.
Are poem titles italicized in MLA?: Short poems take quotation marks, even on a website by themselves. Book-length poems (The Waste Land, Paradise Lost, Beowulf as a standalone translation) take italics. Untitled numbered poems use a plain description: Sonnet 30. Untitled first-line titles are quoted exactly as the source prints the line.
How do I cite a Shakespeare sonnet in MLA?: If you used one sonnet from an anthology, put Sonnet 30 (no quotation marks) in the Title of Source slot and cite that edition. If you quoted several sonnets from one collection, make one entry for the collection (the Riverside Sonnets example) and name each sonnet in the prose or parenthetical.
Where does the original publication date go in an MLA poem citation?: After the title of the poem, as an optional element: Dickinson, Emily. “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—.” 1859. Poetry: An Introduction… It does not follow the author’s name.
Does MLA 9 still use a 3-em dash for a second work by the same poet?: Yes. Handbook §5.126 still replaces a repeated identical name with three em dashes or three hyphens. The Style Center’s 10 June 2026 note says a later edition will prefer repeating the name for screen-reader access, and either form is acceptable now if your instructor does not object.
How do I cite a short story from The New Yorker in MLA?: If you read it on the magazine’s site, cite the author, story title in quotation marks, The New Yorker, the issue date, and the URL. Munro’s “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” is the 27 December 1999 issue. Add print pages only if you used the paginated issue. A later book appearance is a different container with that book’s pages.
How do I cite Beowulf or another anonymous poem?: If you read a standalone translation, italicize the title and name the translator: Beowulf. Translated by Seamus Heaney, W. W. Norton, 2000. In-text, use the italic title (Beowulf lines xx–xx). If the poem is a short work inside an anthology, quote the title and name the anthology.

Cite the Edition, Then Quote the Lines

A good MLA poetry or short-story citation is a record of a reading, not a trophy for having heard of the work. Name the container you used, style the title for the size of the work, and put in the parenthetical only a locator that edition actually prints. When the quotation itself needs line breaks, use slashes for two or three lines and a block for four or more. That is enough for a reader to find the same words you saw—which is the only authority a literature paper can claim.