Tips for Writing Essays About Poetry Using Quotes
Tips for Writing Essays About Poetry
Using Quotes to Support Your Claim • In earlier classes, you probably learned that when you write an essay, you make a claim and support it with evidence. • The same is true for essays about literature! – The difference is, the claim you are making is about the literature, and the evidence you use for support comes from the literature itself, along with your explanation of the evidence you chose.
When Quoting Poetry…. • You can quote several lines together, a single line, or a few words, whichever suits your purpose best. • HOWEVER, you need to make sure that you do not pull quotes out of context. • Example of a quote out of context: Matthew Arnold is celebrating the beauty of creation when he writes in “Dover Beach” that the world is “So various, so beautiful, so new” (line 32). • What is wrong with the quote use above? • Let’s take a look at the original context.
MLA Format for Quotes from Poems • If all of the words in your quote come from a single line, MLA format requires that you follow the quotation with the word “line” and the line number in parentheses after the quote the first time you use it, and just the line numbers each time after that. • Example of using quotes from a single line: – In “Ozymandias, ” Shelley creates irony by placing words with connotations of grandeur and words with connotations of destruction near one another. The statue’s legs are both “vast and trunkless” (line 2), and near the end of the poem it is described as a “colossal wreck” (line 14).
MLA Format for Quotes from Poems • Example of using two or three lines: – The speaker of “Traveling through the Dark” shows an almost uncomfortable awareness of his place in the natural world when he says, “I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red; / around our group I could hear the wilderness listen” (lines 15 -16). • See p. 50 for textbook example of in-text citation. • See p. 55 for textbook example of works cited for a poem in an anthology.
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