How do I quote poetry in my fiction and cite appropriately?

[Sommer Leigh]

Question for all you MLA Gods and Goddesses - I was thinking about quoting a poem in a short story I am working on, but I'm kind of at a loss as to how to do it. This is very much out of my realm of expertise.

The poem is in public domain, one by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. One of the characters reads a couple of lines from a very long poem, so it is by no means a large piece of quoted text. My first question is this - how do I quote it in dialogue while preserving what I need to preserve of the poem - the line spacing and punctuation, for example? Remember, it's in dialogue, one of the characters is reciting it from memory.

My second question is, how do I note that it has been quoted in the story? Do I need a disclaimer or reference at the beginning or end of the short story? I honestly don't know if I'm ever going to submit the short story to anything, but if I do I would like to get this right so I know in the future. It's just not something I've ever had to do in my fiction before. An essay for class, sure, but never fiction.

The poem is THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER IN SEVEN PARTS By Samuel Taylor Coleridge and are these 4 lines:

The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.

Thank you all very much!

[klbritt]

In many of the novels that I read, poetry or words read or recited are often at the beginning of the dialog.

Example:

*Character* curiously walks over to shelves that are lined with dusty, yellowed books. He runs a finger along the aged spines and pulls a title from it's forgotten home. A book by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Without opening the book he recites his favorite lines from THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER IN SEVEN PARTS.

"The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I."

Something like that or you could even reference it at the end by having another character ask him what he just read/recited...

Good luck!
~Kristie

[polymath]

MLA is for humantities, Chicago is for prose. The style recommendations for quoting and attributing poetry for both are the same though with less rigid formality for prose. A quote is a cite. Attribution is giving credit where credit is due.

Two methods for quoting poetry: inline and block quote. Bracket inline quotes with quotation marks and poetry lines separated with forward slashes bracketed with spaces. The conventional principle for longer than four lines is to use block quotes without quotation mark brackets, though also such poetry cites are frequently block formatted anyway.

Examples, including a prose style for attribution:
Inline;
  "Ah, Jeeves, you awkward bumbler. You mean, I believe, Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner? 'The many men, so beautiful! / And they all dead did lie: / And a thousand thousand slimy things / Lived on; and so did I.' Is that the stanza you mean?"

Note since the cite is within dialogue single quote marks bracket the poetry cite.

Block quote;
  Mapletine read from over Desirae's shoulder. Oh, he thought, what fun, Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

  The many men, so beautiful!
  And they all dead did lie:
  And a thousand thousand slimy things
  Lived on; and so did I.


Or if said aloud the same block quote format serves.

[Sommer Leigh]

Thank you for your help This is just not something that has ever come up for me before in my writing. I knew how to quote the lines with the forward slashes but it looked really strange in dialgoue. I didn't know if it was still applicable when someone was reciting the words.

Should I make a mention at the beginning that a quote from the poem is used? Does it matter? I've seen this done before, but I didn't pay attention to the circumstances of how it was quoted in the text.

Man. I feel like I'm back in college again. Quick! Someone get me a Norton's Anthology!

[polymath]

The slashes are a formal recommendation. They are not absolutely required in informal prose for formally formatted poetry where the lines of verse begin with capital letters, which serve as line markers when the punctuation doesn't signal a line break. The slashes do clutter up the dialogue, which current style trends recommend downstyling--leaving out--for reading ease.

The attribution convention for including the works of other writers in prose is to have an acknowledgment page, no matter if the works are in the public domain or under copyright. As you may know, the latter require express permission for use regardless of length. For a short story, include an unnumbered acknowledgment page in the submission packet. Let a publisher decide where to put it in their publication. Usually at the back end. For a novel, the same holds true regarding an acknowledgment page. Traditionally, acknowledgments went on the copyright page or on other frontmatter pages. Recently, they've migrated to backmatter pages.

An acknowledgment page can be done in MLA works cited style, which is close enough to the Chicago style as makes no difference. The MLA attribution style recommendation changed markedly with the 16th edition. the current one, mostly on how to attribute electronic sources. No more URL strings to clutter up the citation attributions. Example;

Coleridge, Samuel T. Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Lyrical Ballads. London 1798. 4:4. Project Gutenberg. Web. 4 April 2012.

Author last name, first name, middle initial. Title italicized if a long work that stands alone, bracketed with quote marks if a short work from a collection or a part of a larger publication. Original publication name in italics. Place of original publication and year. Since the ctie is from poetry, chapter and verse numbers, otherwise page numbers. If the poetry cite is less than an entire verse, include line numbers. Chapter:Verse,Lines, i.e., 4:4,1-4. If electronic, database source italicized. Web or Print or CD format used. If electronic, date accessed in International date format.

[Mira]

Wow, Polymath. So, this doesn't conflict with Polymath's excellent advice....and I could be wrong. But in terms of crediting the poem, if it's public domain, I'm not sure you have to credit it at all.....? I think it's conventional, but you don't have to. But maybe I'm wrong.

But you probably want to, regardless, and I agree with what Polymath says about the acknowledgements section.

Powerful stanza, btw. Can imagine an emotional impact of that in a story.

[Sommer Leigh]

Mira - the poem is incredible, one of my favorites. I think I might have half of it memorized by now and the Gustave Dore woodcarvings done for it totally haunt me. I highly recommend reading it - it's one of those narrative poems accessible by everyone, even those who aren't all that excited about old British poetry. I think Polymath gave me all the info I need, most of which I suspected but had no frame of reference to go by.

[polymath]

Wow, Polymath. So, this doesn't conflict with Polymath's excellent advice....and I could be wrong. But in terms of crediting the poem, if it's public domain, I'm not sure you have to credit it at all.....? I think it's conventional, but you don't have to. But maybe I'm wrong.

But you probably want to, regardless, and I agree with what Polymath says about the acknowledgements section.

Powerful stanza, btw. Can imagine an emotional impact of that in a story.

Some degree of informal attribution of public domain work uses are conventional, at least a last name and title. Otherwise, a writer may face accusations of plagiary for representing through omission someone else's work as his or her own. Plagiarism of a public domain work might not cause any criminal or civil action because there's no one with legal standing to bring an action; however, attribution of public domain works is a respectable professional courtesy and enhances rather than diminishes a writer's reputation.

[Mira]

Mira - the poem is incredible, one of my favorites. I think I might have half of it memorized by now and the Gustave Dore woodcarvings done for it totally haunt me. I highly recommend reading it - it's one of those narrative poems accessible by everyone, even those who aren't all that excited about old British poetry. I think Polymath gave me all the info I need, most of which I suspected but had no frame of reference to go by.

I'm not usually into poetry, but you've convinced me to take a look. Gorgeous stanza.

Some degree of informal attribution of public domain work uses are conventional, at least a last name and title. Otherwise, a writer may face accusations of plagiary for representing through omission someone else's work as his or her own. Plagiarism of a public domain work might not cause any criminal or civil action because there's no one with legal standing to bring an action; however, attribution of public domain works is a respectable professional courtesy and enhances rather than diminishes a writer's reputation.

That make sense. I think, regardless, I'd want to give credit where credit is due, but it's true a writer could be viewed negatively for not doing it.

[johnsonjame]

Question for all you MLA Gods and Goddesses - I was thinking about quoting a poem in a short story I am working on, but I'm kind of at a loss as to how to do it. This is very much out of my realm of expertise.

The poem is in public domain, one by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. One of the characters reads a couple of lines from a very long poem, so it is by no means a large piece of quoted text. My first question is this - how do I quote it in dialogue while preserving what I need to preserve of the poem - the line spacing and punctuation, for example? Remember, it's in dialogue, one of the characters is reciting it from memory.

My second question is, how do I note that it has been quoted in the story? Do I need a disclaimer or reference at the beginning or end of the short story? I honestly don't know if I'm ever going to submit the short story to anything, but if I do I would like to get this right so I know in the future. It's just not something I've ever had to do in my fiction before. An essay for class, sure, but never fiction.

The poem is THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER IN SEVEN PARTS By Samuel Taylor Coleridge and are these 4 lines:

The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.

Thank you all very much!

Great question! Since the poem is in the public domain, you're free to use it. In dialogue, it's fine to adjust the formatting a bit to fit natural speech, but you can still preserve line breaks by using slashes ( / ) or spacing creatively. No formal citation is needed in fiction, but adding a brief note at the end (e.g., “Excerpt from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge”) shows respect for the source.