The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel
Doug Holder
Cervena Barva Press
PO BOX 440357 W. Somerville, MA. 02144
No ISBN $13.00 www.lulu.com http://cervenabarvapress.com
Pamela Annas, PhD
Reviewer
Doug Holder is above all an urban poet, an observer chronicling the everyday sights and absurdities of Somerville, Boston and New York City in plain talk flavored with cool irony and sudden startling bursts of imagery. His settings include hospital rooms, bars, coffee shops, Harvard Yard, the post office, buses and subway trains, the Boston Public Library, Shea Stadium, housing projects, city streets, and the Midtown Tunnel from Queens to Manhattan which is the location of the book's title poem. His characters are bizarre and ordinary like all of us. Several of the poems are inspired by newspaper stories - about a woman who sat on a toilet for two years in her boyfriend's apartment, about an old man who murdered his equally aged wife, about a middle aged man who died on a subway train: "the Daily dropped/ From his hands. . . .The trains backed up/ From Cambridge to Dorchester."
I'm reminded in the pages of this collection of meeting, a year or two before her death, the artist Alice Neel, who painted gorgeously surreal ironic portraits of famous and ordinary people in the 1930s and 40s--and shivering as she looked me over. Doug Holder looks at the world through a similarly sharp and amused set of eyes. Yet there is no malice but a profound sympathy here - for the helplessness of aging and of poverty, for physical and mental illnesses, for the complexity of family relations - and most of all, for the isolation and loneliness lurking underneath tenaciously crowded city life. In the title poem of the collection, the man in the booth in the Midtown Tunnel "paces the perimeter/ Of his cage" while outside the cars whip by: "And we are/ Faceless and a blur,/ Behind thick plates/ Of light-bleached glass."
However, let me assure you this is not a gloomy collection of poems. There are rich nuggets of humor and wry reflection throughout this collection and, to combat the isolation of urban life, in almost every poem a relationship is forged between the observing eye and the subject of the poem. So, for example, as the speaker of the poem observes a woman nursing in a restaurant in "Private Dining Under a Blouse":
I saw
The infant emerge
Sleeping
Held in an untroubled
Dream.
I sucked on my straw
Flattening the plastic stem
Still awake
And troubled.
A few of the poems in this collection, like the one above, segue gracefully in subject from Holder's last book, Of All the Meals I Had Before: Poems About Food and Eating. Another is a poem toward the end of the book, "The Last Hotdog": "She brought it/ to his sick bed,/ He bit through/ The red casing/ The familiar orgasm/ Of juice/ Hitting the roof/ Of his mouth". And one more food-focused poem, "At the Fruit Stand," which is about bananas and melons and grapes and is too erotic to discuss in a family publication. However, you will enjoy it. And the whole collection.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Luke Salisbury--The Man In The Booth In The Midtown Tunnel by Doug Holder Review by Luke Salisbury
The Man In The Booth In The Midtown Tunnel by Doug Holder
(Somerville, Mass.)
Ibbetson Street Press founder Doug Holder will be releasing a new collection of his poetry this summer (2008) through the Cervena Barva Press (http://cervenabarvapress.com ) "The Man In The Booth In The Midtown Tunnel"
Here is a review from Luke Salisbury author of the award winning novel "Hollywood and Sunset," and a Professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College ( Boston):
The Man In The Booth in The Midtown Tunnel
Doug Holder is a very funny man and a very funny poet, but his new collection is much more than funny. There's a profound seriousness in this book. Holder deals with his past and sometimes sour present. He doesn't spare us the intensity and craziness he sees and feels around him. The title poem, a very fine poem, catches the fears and wonders of a New York childhood. I also felt loneliness, fear and a tantalizing feeling of being trapped in a grown-up world riding through the Midtown Tunnel.
Another poem speaks of "A bus full of exiles." We're all on that bus and Holder doesn't let us off until we have shared his feelings of desolation and even madness everywhere from "effete ivied walls" to the wards of McLean Hospital, stopping off for some of "The Love Life Of J. Edgar Hoover (The poem is everything you hope and expect it will be -"Mother downstairs/Off her rocker"), to "Killing Time at The 99" which has the fine lines "And drink/To all/This/Loneliness/Made visible" (Great lines I think), to "hoping/there/is/still/someone/out there" when using the "Pay Phones On The Boston Common" to final observations of a "Rat's Carcass."
The collection isn't depressing. It's alive. Alive with vitality, ugliness, sadness, sex, even love. It's all here. This is Holder's best to date
(Somerville, Mass.)
Ibbetson Street Press founder Doug Holder will be releasing a new collection of his poetry this summer (2008) through the Cervena Barva Press (http://cervenabarvapress.com ) "The Man In The Booth In The Midtown Tunnel"
Here is a review from Luke Salisbury author of the award winning novel "Hollywood and Sunset," and a Professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College ( Boston):
The Man In The Booth in The Midtown Tunnel
Doug Holder is a very funny man and a very funny poet, but his new collection is much more than funny. There's a profound seriousness in this book. Holder deals with his past and sometimes sour present. He doesn't spare us the intensity and craziness he sees and feels around him. The title poem, a very fine poem, catches the fears and wonders of a New York childhood. I also felt loneliness, fear and a tantalizing feeling of being trapped in a grown-up world riding through the Midtown Tunnel.
Another poem speaks of "A bus full of exiles." We're all on that bus and Holder doesn't let us off until we have shared his feelings of desolation and even madness everywhere from "effete ivied walls" to the wards of McLean Hospital, stopping off for some of "The Love Life Of J. Edgar Hoover (The poem is everything you hope and expect it will be -"Mother downstairs/Off her rocker"), to "Killing Time at The 99" which has the fine lines "And drink/To all/This/Loneliness/Made visible" (Great lines I think), to "hoping/there/is/still/someone/out there" when using the "Pay Phones On The Boston Common" to final observations of a "Rat's Carcass."
The collection isn't depressing. It's alive. Alive with vitality, ugliness, sadness, sex, even love. It's all here. This is Holder's best to date
Local's Banal Poems Fascinate, Falter--Harvard Crimson
"The Man in the Booth at the Midtown Tunnel" by Doug Holder
By Olivia S. Pei, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Published: Friday, February 27, 2009 Harvard Crimson
From the lady in the psychiatric ward to the man in Shea Stadium, Doug Holder describes the curious essence of otherwise mundanely odd people. “As a kid, I always wondered about the man in the small booth in the middle of the Midtown Tunnel,” he writes in the prelude to the first poem of his newest book, “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel.” In this collection, the poet’s gaze spans New York and the greater Boston area as he observes his characters with attentive and probing eyes. Holder recounts absurd moments in the miserably ordinary lives that constellate his world. He uses these stories as a sort of social critique of today’s humdrum realities, engaging a universal longing for something beyond the banal.
But Holder’s material doesn’t spark much more interest than that. Title characters like “The Woman Who Sat on the Toilet for Two Years” fail to enthuse. What seems to be Holder’s heroic effort to show readers what lies beneath the grim faces he writes about is ultimately unsatisfying. To say that he even succeeds in rendering his insipid characters relatable is dubious. Is a woman “Training Her Pet” an interesting topic for a poem? Holder never convincingly answers the question.
Holder’s real crime, however, lies in writing poems as bland as his subjects. In “Watching Her Read My Poem,” the narrator observes, “She did hover on my page / A bit more than the others… Then on to the street / And with perfect aim / Right into / the trash.” It does not seem so hard to follow suit. Here, as in many of his other poems, Holder’s choice of unusual material actually turns out to be a strength, but his imagery lacks clarity. He has reduced his poetry to little more than people watching, and in the wake of this realization, it’s natural to ask whether street-side voyeurism is enough to sustain.
In his poem “An Old Harvard Man,” Holder risks telling the story of a man who urinates on the John Harvard statue. “And there you were / Dumbfounded. / Walking the ward / After angrily spraying / The statue of John Harvard / A crimson red. / The Japanese tourists / Snapping your picture / As if you were / Part of the attraction.” Regrettably, this topic not only lacks in originality, but it’s ambitions toward the grotesque never outstrip the juvenile. An Extention School alumnus, Holder should have been aware that there is nothing more to give to this poem than an initial flabbergasted smirk quickly followed by dismissal.
In “Davis Square, Somerville: Colonial Woman at the Au Bon Pain,” Holder writes, “And Underneath / A bone-white bonnet / Lies the waves and crests / Of luxuriant / Beguiling / Purple Hair.” For once, Holder seems to have found an interesting figure, yet his poem fails to lift this unusual woman from the paper and into life. Though Holder pays a lot of attention to her physical appearance, he fails to describe her personality, which would be a much stronger focus. So much more can be said, yet his poems fall short.
Luckily for Holder, his talent with words saves his subjects from remaining mundane disasters all the time. The fervor he infuses into each line rewards a close scrutiny of his work. Even in “The Woman Who Sat on the Toilet for Two Years,” Holder manages to write, “All your slick / Posturing. / The endless histrionics / Wind up / In a dance / Cheek to cheek / Above the bowl.” An ironic explication of characters like this one leads to captivating lines often filled with biting understatements. His accessible diction serves to capture well-observed and interesting moments in the ordinary.
So Holder’s work does have redeeming qualities. Perhaps he desired his writing to be subtle and, like his subjects, oddly ordinary. In fact, his understated humor is often lacking in today’s culture. In the end of “Sig Klein’s Fat Man’s Shop,” he writes, “Comforting us / With the notion / That there is indeed / ‘A fit for any sized man,’ / Just look / What’s underneath.” Athough the topic of the store itself is boring, Holder leaves us with an inkling of wonder. With a little closer reading, Holder finally succeeds in shedding light on society in an interesting way. Through his poetry, he exposes the world as he sees it: depressing, absurd, yet worth living in.
It is this world that Holder skillfully depicts in “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel.” The collection of poems turns out to contain scores of subtle humor and well-written verse. Despite the poet’s often-unfortunate choice of uninspiring characters, Doug Holder is able to convey a certain charm in what is conventionally commonplace. His poems become endearing and insightful upon further reading. Like his characters, this book deserves a glance, maybe even two, but nothing more.
By Olivia S. Pei, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Published: Friday, February 27, 2009 Harvard Crimson
From the lady in the psychiatric ward to the man in Shea Stadium, Doug Holder describes the curious essence of otherwise mundanely odd people. “As a kid, I always wondered about the man in the small booth in the middle of the Midtown Tunnel,” he writes in the prelude to the first poem of his newest book, “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel.” In this collection, the poet’s gaze spans New York and the greater Boston area as he observes his characters with attentive and probing eyes. Holder recounts absurd moments in the miserably ordinary lives that constellate his world. He uses these stories as a sort of social critique of today’s humdrum realities, engaging a universal longing for something beyond the banal.
But Holder’s material doesn’t spark much more interest than that. Title characters like “The Woman Who Sat on the Toilet for Two Years” fail to enthuse. What seems to be Holder’s heroic effort to show readers what lies beneath the grim faces he writes about is ultimately unsatisfying. To say that he even succeeds in rendering his insipid characters relatable is dubious. Is a woman “Training Her Pet” an interesting topic for a poem? Holder never convincingly answers the question.
Holder’s real crime, however, lies in writing poems as bland as his subjects. In “Watching Her Read My Poem,” the narrator observes, “She did hover on my page / A bit more than the others… Then on to the street / And with perfect aim / Right into / the trash.” It does not seem so hard to follow suit. Here, as in many of his other poems, Holder’s choice of unusual material actually turns out to be a strength, but his imagery lacks clarity. He has reduced his poetry to little more than people watching, and in the wake of this realization, it’s natural to ask whether street-side voyeurism is enough to sustain.
In his poem “An Old Harvard Man,” Holder risks telling the story of a man who urinates on the John Harvard statue. “And there you were / Dumbfounded. / Walking the ward / After angrily spraying / The statue of John Harvard / A crimson red. / The Japanese tourists / Snapping your picture / As if you were / Part of the attraction.” Regrettably, this topic not only lacks in originality, but it’s ambitions toward the grotesque never outstrip the juvenile. An Extention School alumnus, Holder should have been aware that there is nothing more to give to this poem than an initial flabbergasted smirk quickly followed by dismissal.
In “Davis Square, Somerville: Colonial Woman at the Au Bon Pain,” Holder writes, “And Underneath / A bone-white bonnet / Lies the waves and crests / Of luxuriant / Beguiling / Purple Hair.” For once, Holder seems to have found an interesting figure, yet his poem fails to lift this unusual woman from the paper and into life. Though Holder pays a lot of attention to her physical appearance, he fails to describe her personality, which would be a much stronger focus. So much more can be said, yet his poems fall short.
Luckily for Holder, his talent with words saves his subjects from remaining mundane disasters all the time. The fervor he infuses into each line rewards a close scrutiny of his work. Even in “The Woman Who Sat on the Toilet for Two Years,” Holder manages to write, “All your slick / Posturing. / The endless histrionics / Wind up / In a dance / Cheek to cheek / Above the bowl.” An ironic explication of characters like this one leads to captivating lines often filled with biting understatements. His accessible diction serves to capture well-observed and interesting moments in the ordinary.
So Holder’s work does have redeeming qualities. Perhaps he desired his writing to be subtle and, like his subjects, oddly ordinary. In fact, his understated humor is often lacking in today’s culture. In the end of “Sig Klein’s Fat Man’s Shop,” he writes, “Comforting us / With the notion / That there is indeed / ‘A fit for any sized man,’ / Just look / What’s underneath.” Athough the topic of the store itself is boring, Holder leaves us with an inkling of wonder. With a little closer reading, Holder finally succeeds in shedding light on society in an interesting way. Through his poetry, he exposes the world as he sees it: depressing, absurd, yet worth living in.
It is this world that Holder skillfully depicts in “The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel.” The collection of poems turns out to contain scores of subtle humor and well-written verse. Despite the poet’s often-unfortunate choice of uninspiring characters, Doug Holder is able to convey a certain charm in what is conventionally commonplace. His poems become endearing and insightful upon further reading. Like his characters, this book deserves a glance, maybe even two, but nothing more.
Explicating A Poem
Personal Response to Poem
What is happening in Poem?
Look up words...
Is there a persona speaking in the poem?
Describe the world of the poem the setting...both physical and social.
Describe the tension between speaker and the world
Experience the images in the poem.
Pay attention to the sound of the poem
Line breaks.
How does the poem begin--how does it end and why?
What is the mood of the poem?
What does the poem mean?
Historical issues with the poem--context.
*From Pam Annas' "Explicating a Poem."
What is happening in Poem?
Look up words...
Is there a persona speaking in the poem?
Describe the world of the poem the setting...both physical and social.
Describe the tension between speaker and the world
Experience the images in the poem.
Pay attention to the sound of the poem
Line breaks.
How does the poem begin--how does it end and why?
What is the mood of the poem?
What does the poem mean?
Historical issues with the poem--context.
*From Pam Annas' "Explicating a Poem."
Friday, March 11, 2011
MLA IN TEXT CITES
MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics
Summary: MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (7th ed.) and the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (3rd ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.
Contributors:Tony Russell, Allen Brizee, Elizabeth Angeli, Russell Keck
Last Edited: 2010-12-02 02:24:10
Guidelines for referring to the works of others in your text using MLA style are covered in chapter six of the MLA Handbook and in chapter seven of the MLA Style Manual. Both books provide extensive examples, so it's a good idea to consult them if you want to become even more familiar with MLA guidelines or if you have a particular reference question.
Basic In-Text Citation Rules
In MLA style, referring to the works of others in your text is done by using what is known as parenthetical citation. This method involves placing relevant source information in parentheses after a quote or a paraphrase.
General Guidelines
* The source information required in a parenthetical citation depends (1.) upon the source medium (e.g. Print, Web, DVD) and (2.) upon the source’s entry on the Works Cited (bibliography) page.
* Any source information that you provide in-text must correspond to the source information on the Works Cited page. More specifically, whatever signal word or phrase you provide to your readers in the text, must be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of the corresponding entry in the Works Cited List.
In-Text Citations: Author-Page Style
MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page. The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence. For example:
Wordsworth stated that Romantic poetry was marked by a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (263).
Romantic poetry is characterized by the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (Wordsworth 263).
Wordsworth extensively explored the role of emotion in the creative process (263).
Both citations in the examples above, (263) and (Wordsworth 263), tell readers that the information in the sentence can be located on page 263 of a work by an author named Wordsworth. If readers want more information about this source, they can turn to the Works Cited page, where, under the name of Wordsworth, they would find the following information:
Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads. London: Oxford U.P., 1967. Print.
In-text Citations for Print Sources with Known Author
For Print sources like books, magazines, scholarly journal articles, and newspapers, provide a signal word or phrase (usually the author’s last name) and a page number. If you provide the signal word/phrase in the sentence, you do not need to include it in the parenthetical citation.
Human beings have been described by Kenneth Burke as "symbol-using animals" (3). Human beings have been described as "symbol-using animals" (Burke 3).
These examples must correspond to an entry that begins with Burke, which will be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of an entry in the Works Cited:
Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method. Berkeley: U of California P, 1966. Print.
In-text Citations for Print Sources with No Known Author
When a source has no known author, use a shortened title of the work instead of an author name. Place the title in quotation marks if it's a short work (e.g. articles) or italicize it if it's a longer work (e.g. plays, books, television shows, entire websites) and provide a page number.
We see so many global warming hotspots in North America likely because this region has “more readily accessible climatic data and more comprehensive programs to monitor and study environmental change . . . ” (“Impact of Global Warming” 6).
In this example, since the reader does not know the author of the article, an abbreviated title of the article appears in the parenthetical citation which corresponds to the full name of the article which appears first at the left-hand margin of its respective entry in the Works Cited. Thus, the writer includes the title in quotation marks as the signal phrase in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader directly to the source on the Works Cited page. The Works Cited entry appears as follows:
“The Impact of Global Warming in North America.” GLOBAL WARMING: Early Signs. 1999. Web. 23 Mar. 2009.
We'll learn how to make a Works Cited page in a bit, but right now it's important to know that parenthetical citations and Works Cited pages allow readers to know which sources you consulted in writing your essay, so that they can either verify your interpretation of the sources or use them in their own scholarly work.
Author-Page Citation for Classic and Literary Works with Multiple Editions
Page numbers are always required, but additional citation information can help literary scholars, who may have a different edition of a classic work like Marx and Engels's The Communist Manifesto. In such cases, give the page number of your edition (making sure the edition is listed in your Works Cited page, of course) followed by a semicolon, and then the appropriate abbreviations for volume (vol.), book (bk.), part (pt.), chapter (ch.), section (sec.), or paragraph (par.). For example:
Marx and Engels described human history as marked by class struggles (79; ch. 1).
Citing Authors with Same Last Names
Sometimes more information is necessary to identify the source from which a quotation is taken. For instance, if two or more authors have the same last name, provide both authors' first initials (or even the authors' full name if different authors share initials) in your citation. For example:
Although some medical ethicists claim that cloning will lead to designer children (R. Miller 12), others note that the advantages for medical research outweigh this consideration (A. Miller 46).
Citing a Work by Multiple Authors
For a source with three or fewer authors, list the authors' last names in the text or in the parenthetical citation:
Smith, Yang, and Moore argue that tougher gun control is not needed in the United States (76).
The authors state "Tighter gun control in the United States erodes Second Amendment rights" (Smith, Yang, and Moore 76).
For a source with more than three authors, use the work's bibliographic information as a guide for your citation. Provide the first author's last name followed by et al. or list all the last names.
Jones et al. counter Smith, Yang, and Moore's argument by noting that the current spike in gun violence in America compels law makers to adjust gun laws (4).
Or
Legal experts counter Smith, Yang, and Moore's argument by noting that the current spike in gun violence in America compels law makers to adjust gun laws (Jones et al. 4).
Or
Jones, Driscoll, Ackerson, and Bell counter Smith, Yang, and Moore's argument by noting that the current spike in gun violence in America compels law makers to adjust gun laws (4)
Summary: MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (7th ed.) and the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (3rd ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.
Contributors:Tony Russell, Allen Brizee, Elizabeth Angeli, Russell Keck
Last Edited: 2010-12-02 02:24:10
Guidelines for referring to the works of others in your text using MLA style are covered in chapter six of the MLA Handbook and in chapter seven of the MLA Style Manual. Both books provide extensive examples, so it's a good idea to consult them if you want to become even more familiar with MLA guidelines or if you have a particular reference question.
Basic In-Text Citation Rules
In MLA style, referring to the works of others in your text is done by using what is known as parenthetical citation. This method involves placing relevant source information in parentheses after a quote or a paraphrase.
General Guidelines
* The source information required in a parenthetical citation depends (1.) upon the source medium (e.g. Print, Web, DVD) and (2.) upon the source’s entry on the Works Cited (bibliography) page.
* Any source information that you provide in-text must correspond to the source information on the Works Cited page. More specifically, whatever signal word or phrase you provide to your readers in the text, must be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of the corresponding entry in the Works Cited List.
In-Text Citations: Author-Page Style
MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page. The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence. For example:
Wordsworth stated that Romantic poetry was marked by a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (263).
Romantic poetry is characterized by the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (Wordsworth 263).
Wordsworth extensively explored the role of emotion in the creative process (263).
Both citations in the examples above, (263) and (Wordsworth 263), tell readers that the information in the sentence can be located on page 263 of a work by an author named Wordsworth. If readers want more information about this source, they can turn to the Works Cited page, where, under the name of Wordsworth, they would find the following information:
Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads. London: Oxford U.P., 1967. Print.
In-text Citations for Print Sources with Known Author
For Print sources like books, magazines, scholarly journal articles, and newspapers, provide a signal word or phrase (usually the author’s last name) and a page number. If you provide the signal word/phrase in the sentence, you do not need to include it in the parenthetical citation.
Human beings have been described by Kenneth Burke as "symbol-using animals" (3). Human beings have been described as "symbol-using animals" (Burke 3).
These examples must correspond to an entry that begins with Burke, which will be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of an entry in the Works Cited:
Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method. Berkeley: U of California P, 1966. Print.
In-text Citations for Print Sources with No Known Author
When a source has no known author, use a shortened title of the work instead of an author name. Place the title in quotation marks if it's a short work (e.g. articles) or italicize it if it's a longer work (e.g. plays, books, television shows, entire websites) and provide a page number.
We see so many global warming hotspots in North America likely because this region has “more readily accessible climatic data and more comprehensive programs to monitor and study environmental change . . . ” (“Impact of Global Warming” 6).
In this example, since the reader does not know the author of the article, an abbreviated title of the article appears in the parenthetical citation which corresponds to the full name of the article which appears first at the left-hand margin of its respective entry in the Works Cited. Thus, the writer includes the title in quotation marks as the signal phrase in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader directly to the source on the Works Cited page. The Works Cited entry appears as follows:
“The Impact of Global Warming in North America.” GLOBAL WARMING: Early Signs. 1999. Web. 23 Mar. 2009.
We'll learn how to make a Works Cited page in a bit, but right now it's important to know that parenthetical citations and Works Cited pages allow readers to know which sources you consulted in writing your essay, so that they can either verify your interpretation of the sources or use them in their own scholarly work.
Author-Page Citation for Classic and Literary Works with Multiple Editions
Page numbers are always required, but additional citation information can help literary scholars, who may have a different edition of a classic work like Marx and Engels's The Communist Manifesto. In such cases, give the page number of your edition (making sure the edition is listed in your Works Cited page, of course) followed by a semicolon, and then the appropriate abbreviations for volume (vol.), book (bk.), part (pt.), chapter (ch.), section (sec.), or paragraph (par.). For example:
Marx and Engels described human history as marked by class struggles (79; ch. 1).
Citing Authors with Same Last Names
Sometimes more information is necessary to identify the source from which a quotation is taken. For instance, if two or more authors have the same last name, provide both authors' first initials (or even the authors' full name if different authors share initials) in your citation. For example:
Although some medical ethicists claim that cloning will lead to designer children (R. Miller 12), others note that the advantages for medical research outweigh this consideration (A. Miller 46).
Citing a Work by Multiple Authors
For a source with three or fewer authors, list the authors' last names in the text or in the parenthetical citation:
Smith, Yang, and Moore argue that tougher gun control is not needed in the United States (76).
The authors state "Tighter gun control in the United States erodes Second Amendment rights" (Smith, Yang, and Moore 76).
For a source with more than three authors, use the work's bibliographic information as a guide for your citation. Provide the first author's last name followed by et al. or list all the last names.
Jones et al. counter Smith, Yang, and Moore's argument by noting that the current spike in gun violence in America compels law makers to adjust gun laws (4).
Or
Legal experts counter Smith, Yang, and Moore's argument by noting that the current spike in gun violence in America compels law makers to adjust gun laws (Jones et al. 4).
Or
Jones, Driscoll, Ackerson, and Bell counter Smith, Yang, and Moore's argument by noting that the current spike in gun violence in America compels law makers to adjust gun laws (4)
Writing a Bibliography: MLA Format
Writing a Bibliography: MLA Format
Below are standard formats and examples for basic bibliographic information recommended by the Modern Language Association (MLA). For more information on the MLA format, see http://www.mla.org/style_faq.
Basics
Your list of works cited should begin at the end of the paper on a new page with the centered title, Works Cited. Alphabetize the entries in your list by the author's last name, using the letter-by-letter system (ignore spaces and other punctuation.) If the author's name is unknown, alphabetize by the title, ignoring any A, An, or The.
For dates, spell out the names of months in the text of your paper, but abbreviate them in the list of works cited, except for May, June, and July. Use either the day-month-year style (22 July 1999) or the month-day-year style (July 22, 1999) and be consistent. With the month-day-year style, be sure to add a comma after the year unless another punctuation mark goes there.
Underlining or Italics?
When reports were written on typewriters, the names of publications were underlined because most typewriters had no way to print italics. If you write a bibliography by hand, you should still underline the names of publications. But, if you use a computer, then publication names should be in italics as they are below. Always check with your instructor regarding their preference of using italics or underlining. Our examples use italics.
Hanging Indentation
All MLA citations should use hanging indents, that is, the first line of an entry should be flush left, and the second and subsequent lines should be indented 1/2".
Capitalization, Abbreviation, and Punctuation
The MLA guidelines specify using title case capitalization - capitalize the first words, the last words, and all principal words, including those that follow hyphens in compound terms. Use lowercase abbreviations to identify the parts of a work (e.g., vol. for volume, ed. for editor) except when these designations follow a period. Whenever possible, use the appropriate abbreviated forms for the publisher's name (Random instead of Random House).
Separate author, title, and publication information with a period followed by one space. Use a colon and a space to separate a title from a subtitle. Include other kinds of punctuation only if it is part of the title. Use quotation marks to indicate the titles of short works appearing within larger works (e.g., "Memories of Childhood." American Short Stories). Also use quotation marks for titles of unpublished works and songs.
Format Examples
Books
Format:
Author's last name, first name. Book title. Additional information. City of publication: Publishing company, publication date.
Examples:
Allen, Thomas B. Vanishing Wildlife of North America. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1974.
Boorstin, Daniel J. The Creators: A History of the Heroes of the Imagination. New York: Random, 1992.
Hall, Donald, ed. The Oxford Book of American Literacy Anecdotes. New York: Oxford UP, 1981.
Searles, Baird, and Martin Last. A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1979.
Toomer, Jean. Cane. Ed. Darwin T. Turner. New York: Norton, 1988.
Encyclopedia & Dictionary
Format:
Author's last name, first name. "Title of Article." Title of Encyclopedia. Date.
Note: If the dictionary or encyclopedia arranges articles alphabetically, you may omit volume and page numbers.
Examples:
"Azimuthal Equidistant Projection." Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 10th ed. 1993.
Pettingill, Olin Sewall, Jr. "Falcon and Falconry." World Book Encyclopedia. 1980.
Tobias, Richard. "Thurber, James." Encyclopedia Americana. 1991 ed.
Magazine & Newspaper Articles
Format:
Author's last name, first name. "Article title." Periodical title Volume # Date: inclusive pages.
Note: If an edition is named on the masthead, add a comma after the date and specify the edition.
Examples:
Hall, Trish. "IQ Scores Are Up, and Psychologists Wonder Why." New York Times 24 Feb. 1998, late ed.: F1+.
Kalette, Denise. "California Town Counts Down to Big Quake." USA Today 9 21 July 1986: sec. A: 1.
Kanfer, Stefan. "Heard Any Good Books Lately?" Time 113 21 July 1986: 71-72.
Trillin, Calvin. "Culture Shopping." New Yorker 15 Feb. 1993: 48-51.
Website or Webpage
Format:
Author's last name, first name (if available). "Title of work within a project or database." Title of site, project, or database. Editor (if available). Electronic publication information (Date of publication or of the latest update, and name of any sponsoring institution or organization). Date of access and.
Note: If you cannot find some of this information, cite what is available.
Examples:
Devitt, Terry. "Lightning injures four at music festival." The Why? Files. 2 Aug. 2001. 23 Jan. 2002.
Dove, Rita. "Lady Freedom among Us." The Electronic Text Center. Ed. David Seaman. 1998. Alderman Lib., U of Virginia. 19 June 1998.
Lancashire, Ian. Homepage. 28 Mar. 2002. 15 May 2002.
Levy, Steven. "Great Minds, Great Ideas." Newsweek 27 May 2002. 10 June 2002
This handout provides an example of a Works Cited page in MLA 2009 format.
Works Cited
"Blueprint Lays Out Clear Path for Climate Action." Environmental Defense Fund. Environmental Defense Fund, 8 May 2007. Web. 24 May 2009.
Clinton, Bill. Interview by Andrew C. Revkin. “Clinton on Climate Change.” New York Times. New York Times, May 2007. Web. 25 May 2009.
Dean, Cornelia. "Executive on a Mission: Saving the Planet." New York Times. New York Times, 22 May 2007. Web. 25 May 2009.
Ebert, Roger. "An Inconvenient Truth." Rev. of An Inconvenient Truth, dir. Davis Guggenheim. Rogerebert.com. Sun-Times News Group, 2 June 2006. Web. 24 May 2009.
GlobalWarming.org. Cooler Heads Coalition, 2007. Web. 24 May 2009.
Gowdy, John. "Avoiding Self-organized Extinction: Toward a Co-evolutionary Economics of Sustainability." International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology 14.1 (2007): 27-36. Print.
An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Perf. Al Gore, Billy West. Paramount, 2006. DVD.
Leroux, Marcel. Global Warming: Myth Or Reality?: The Erring Ways of Climatology. New York: Springer, 2005. Print.
Milken, Michael, Gary Becker, Myron Scholes, and Daniel Kahneman. "On Global Warming and Financial Imbalances." New Perspectives Quarterly 23.4 (2006): 63. Print
Nordhaus, William D. "After Kyoto: Alternative Mechanisms to Control Global Warming." American Economic Review 96.2 (2006): 31-34. Print.
---. "Global Warming Economics." Science 9 Nov. 2001: 1283-84. Science Online. Web. 24 May 2009.
Shulte, Bret. "Putting a Price on Pollution." Usnews.com. US News & World Rept., 6 May 2007. Web. 24 May 2009.
Uzawa, Hirofumi. Economic Theory and Global Warming. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. Print.
Below are standard formats and examples for basic bibliographic information recommended by the Modern Language Association (MLA). For more information on the MLA format, see http://www.mla.org/style_faq.
Basics
Your list of works cited should begin at the end of the paper on a new page with the centered title, Works Cited. Alphabetize the entries in your list by the author's last name, using the letter-by-letter system (ignore spaces and other punctuation.) If the author's name is unknown, alphabetize by the title, ignoring any A, An, or The.
For dates, spell out the names of months in the text of your paper, but abbreviate them in the list of works cited, except for May, June, and July. Use either the day-month-year style (22 July 1999) or the month-day-year style (July 22, 1999) and be consistent. With the month-day-year style, be sure to add a comma after the year unless another punctuation mark goes there.
Underlining or Italics?
When reports were written on typewriters, the names of publications were underlined because most typewriters had no way to print italics. If you write a bibliography by hand, you should still underline the names of publications. But, if you use a computer, then publication names should be in italics as they are below. Always check with your instructor regarding their preference of using italics or underlining. Our examples use italics.
Hanging Indentation
All MLA citations should use hanging indents, that is, the first line of an entry should be flush left, and the second and subsequent lines should be indented 1/2".
Capitalization, Abbreviation, and Punctuation
The MLA guidelines specify using title case capitalization - capitalize the first words, the last words, and all principal words, including those that follow hyphens in compound terms. Use lowercase abbreviations to identify the parts of a work (e.g., vol. for volume, ed. for editor) except when these designations follow a period. Whenever possible, use the appropriate abbreviated forms for the publisher's name (Random instead of Random House).
Separate author, title, and publication information with a period followed by one space. Use a colon and a space to separate a title from a subtitle. Include other kinds of punctuation only if it is part of the title. Use quotation marks to indicate the titles of short works appearing within larger works (e.g., "Memories of Childhood." American Short Stories). Also use quotation marks for titles of unpublished works and songs.
Format Examples
Books
Format:
Author's last name, first name. Book title. Additional information. City of publication: Publishing company, publication date.
Examples:
Allen, Thomas B. Vanishing Wildlife of North America. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1974.
Boorstin, Daniel J. The Creators: A History of the Heroes of the Imagination. New York: Random, 1992.
Hall, Donald, ed. The Oxford Book of American Literacy Anecdotes. New York: Oxford UP, 1981.
Searles, Baird, and Martin Last. A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1979.
Toomer, Jean. Cane. Ed. Darwin T. Turner. New York: Norton, 1988.
Encyclopedia & Dictionary
Format:
Author's last name, first name. "Title of Article." Title of Encyclopedia. Date.
Note: If the dictionary or encyclopedia arranges articles alphabetically, you may omit volume and page numbers.
Examples:
"Azimuthal Equidistant Projection." Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 10th ed. 1993.
Pettingill, Olin Sewall, Jr. "Falcon and Falconry." World Book Encyclopedia. 1980.
Tobias, Richard. "Thurber, James." Encyclopedia Americana. 1991 ed.
Magazine & Newspaper Articles
Format:
Author's last name, first name. "Article title." Periodical title Volume # Date: inclusive pages.
Note: If an edition is named on the masthead, add a comma after the date and specify the edition.
Examples:
Hall, Trish. "IQ Scores Are Up, and Psychologists Wonder Why." New York Times 24 Feb. 1998, late ed.: F1+.
Kalette, Denise. "California Town Counts Down to Big Quake." USA Today 9 21 July 1986: sec. A: 1.
Kanfer, Stefan. "Heard Any Good Books Lately?" Time 113 21 July 1986: 71-72.
Trillin, Calvin. "Culture Shopping." New Yorker 15 Feb. 1993: 48-51.
Website or Webpage
Format:
Author's last name, first name (if available). "Title of work within a project or database." Title of site, project, or database. Editor (if available). Electronic publication information (Date of publication or of the latest update, and name of any sponsoring institution or organization). Date of access and
Note: If you cannot find some of this information, cite what is available.
Examples:
Devitt, Terry. "Lightning injures four at music festival." The Why? Files. 2 Aug. 2001. 23 Jan. 2002
Dove, Rita. "Lady Freedom among Us." The Electronic Text Center. Ed. David Seaman. 1998. Alderman Lib., U of Virginia. 19 June 1998
Lancashire, Ian. Homepage. 28 Mar. 2002. 15 May 2002
Levy, Steven. "Great Minds, Great Ideas." Newsweek 27 May 2002. 10 June 2002
This handout provides an example of a Works Cited page in MLA 2009 format.
Works Cited
"Blueprint Lays Out Clear Path for Climate Action." Environmental Defense Fund. Environmental Defense Fund, 8 May 2007. Web. 24 May 2009.
Clinton, Bill. Interview by Andrew C. Revkin. “Clinton on Climate Change.” New York Times. New York Times, May 2007. Web. 25 May 2009.
Dean, Cornelia. "Executive on a Mission: Saving the Planet." New York Times. New York Times, 22 May 2007. Web. 25 May 2009.
Ebert, Roger. "An Inconvenient Truth." Rev. of An Inconvenient Truth, dir. Davis Guggenheim. Rogerebert.com. Sun-Times News Group, 2 June 2006. Web. 24 May 2009.
GlobalWarming.org. Cooler Heads Coalition, 2007. Web. 24 May 2009.
Gowdy, John. "Avoiding Self-organized Extinction: Toward a Co-evolutionary Economics of Sustainability." International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology 14.1 (2007): 27-36. Print.
An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Perf. Al Gore, Billy West. Paramount, 2006. DVD.
Leroux, Marcel. Global Warming: Myth Or Reality?: The Erring Ways of Climatology. New York: Springer, 2005. Print.
Milken, Michael, Gary Becker, Myron Scholes, and Daniel Kahneman. "On Global Warming and Financial Imbalances." New Perspectives Quarterly 23.4 (2006): 63. Print
Nordhaus, William D. "After Kyoto: Alternative Mechanisms to Control Global Warming." American Economic Review 96.2 (2006): 31-34. Print.
---. "Global Warming Economics." Science 9 Nov. 2001: 1283-84. Science Online. Web. 24 May 2009.
Shulte, Bret. "Putting a Price on Pollution." Usnews.com. US News & World Rept., 6 May 2007. Web. 24 May 2009.
Uzawa, Hirofumi. Economic Theory and Global Warming. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. Print.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Sample intro paragraph
Chauncey Lefferts, the main character in Louis Auchinloss's short story The Landmarker was having a classic midlife crisis. After living for years as an "extra man," in the patrician society of New York City, he realized his whole life was a sham. He found that he was a man of no real consequence, and was increasingly on the margins as he grew older. During his time of turmoil he roamed the streets of New York to search for a past that had more meaning for him than his sad present. He started to campaign for an old relic of a building much to the chagrin of the established order.
Thesis: Chauncey is having a midlife crisis.
Paragraph One: What is an extra man?
Paragraph Two: The midlife crisis- talk a bit about his realization
Paragraph Three: Talk about his roaming of the city.
Paragraph Four: Talk about his campaign to save an old building.
Paragraph Five: Conclusion. Midlife Crisis--might mention the outcome--what insight did you glean?
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