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Poetry
TLC / College of the Canyons
Tips for Reading Poetry
Try these tips to help you understand poems better!
 Embrace the challenge with a positive attitude. Try not to focus on expectations of what a poem should
be or any negative experiences with poetry that you may have had.
 Be curious. Ask the speaker questions and have a conversation with the poem.
 Be open minded. Remember that there are many correct ways to interpret a poem—you don’t have to
look for one right answer.
 Read until you reach a punctuation mark, not until the end of a line. Stopping at the end of each line can
make the poem sound choppy.
 Read out loud.
 Don’t skim. Give yourself time to let the words and sounds sink in.
 Read the poem more than once. It may take multiple readings for you to feel comfortable with the poem.
Poetic Feet:
 Iamb u /
Two syllables: unstressed, stressed
a-BOVE

Trochee / u
Two syllables: stressed, unstressed
CARE-less

Spondee / /
Two syllables: unstressed, unstressed
well-loved

Anapest u u /
Three syllables: unstressed, unstressed,
stressed
in-ter-VENE

Dactyl / u u
Three syllables: stressed, unstressed,
unstressed
TEN-der-ly
Poetic Meter:
Determined by the number of feet per line








1 foot = monometer
2 feet = dimeter
3 feet = trimeter
4 feet = tetrameter
5 feet = pentameter
6 feet = hexameter
7 feet = heptameter
8 feet = octameter
Stanza Types:
Grouped set of lines in a poem
 2 lines = couplet
 3 lines = tercet
 4 lines = quatrain
 6 lines = sestet
 7 lines = septet
 8 lines = octet
Common Terms
Speaker: The person who speaks the poem (similar to a narrator in a short story or novel)
Couplet: A pair of successive lines of verse, especially when rhyming together and of the same length
Sonnet: A poem of fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter. There are two main rhyme schemes:
 Shakespearean (English): ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
 Petrarchan (Italian): ABBA ABBA CDE CDE (with some variation)
Enjambment: The carrying over of a sentence from one line to the next
Caesura: A pause or breathing place about the middle of a metrical line, sometimes indicated by a break between
words
Updated September 2016
Student Resources by The Learning Center, College of the Canyons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License.
Poetry
52
TLC / College of the Canyons
How to Cite Poetry (In-Text)
Citations for poems use line numbers rather than page numbers. Line numbers, however, are only marked every
five lines; or if you only find a poem online, the line numbers might not be marked at all. In that case, you’ll need
to count them out. For the first in-text citation, use the word “lines.” Subsequently, just use the line numbers.
Look for a small number off to the side:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
5
If you are citing a three lines or fewer, you will need to indicate a line break with a forward slash (/):
“At length did cross an Albatross, / Thorough the fog it came” (63-64).
For four or more lines, you will recopy the poem as closely to its original format as possible. For some poems, this
can be difficult:
Buffalo Bill’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat. (1-6)
Note: For long quotations, punctuation will appear before the parenthetical citation.
When citing verse plays, you must provide the act and scene number as well as the line numbers. Numbers will be
separated by periods. If you are citing a line from act four, scene two, it will look like this:
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” (4.2.77).
How to Cite Poetry (Works Cited)
Poem in an Anthology:
Tennyson, Lord Alfred. “Ulysses.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 9th
edition, volume 2, W.W. Norton & Company, 2012, pp. 1170-72.
Poem Online:
Jordan, June. “Poem about My Rights.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, 2005,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/48762.
Updated September 2016
Student Resources by The Learning Center, College of the Canyons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License.