1. For quotations of three lines or less, use slashes, the author's last name, and line numbers (not page numbers).
Double space quotations, just as you double space the essay.
In "Jump Shot," basketball is linked to art, specifically when describing the beauty and grace of the
basketball player's form: "Hands like stars, spread to suspend / The ball from five, and only
five, / Magic fingerprints" (Peck, lines 3-5). The words "stars" and "magic" suggest the jump shot is a
wonderful combination of form and motion.
(This poem is on p. 50)
2. For quotations longer than three lines, use a block format. See TSGW, p. 554. If a poem has an unusual format, represent it as accurately as possible, as this example from "400-meter Freestyle" (p. 54) shows.
At the end of the race, the swimmer must rely on
his mental toughness to drive his body, tired and
crying for oxygen, to the finish. The lack of punctuation mirrors this
final, continuous surge:
he drives along on little sips carefully expended
b
u
t
that plum red heart pumps hard cries hurt . . . . (Kumin,
lines 53-57)
At the end of the race, the swimmer must rely on his mental toughness to
drive his body, tired and
crying for oxygen, to the finish. The lack of punctuation mirrors this
final, continuous drive:
"that plum red heart pumps hard cries hurt . . .
/ and makes its final surge"
(Kumin, lines 57, 61).
Into the pocket
it is raging and breaking. (Dickey, lines 11-12).