Do You Italicize Poem Titles?

Poem titles should be italicized. This rule applies to titles of poems that are situated within text. If the poem titles are at the top of a page or on the front cover of a report, they do not need to be italicized.

If italicization is not possible, poem titles can be put in quotation marks or underlined. Poem titles are italicized because they represent a full-length work. However, if someone is writing the title of a book of poetry followed by a list of poems from that book, the title of the book would be considered the full-length work, and it should be italicized. The individual poems are part of the larger work in this case, and as such, they should merely be put into quotation marks.