Brett Whiteley, ‘The balcony 2’ (1975)
The punctuation mark known as the virgule “/” (also called slash, diagonal, or solidus) has seen many uses over time. During the 15th century it was used much like the modern comma. The virgule was used in Britain to separate shillings from pence (2/6 = two shillings and six pence). In modern usage, virgules are used in place of “per” (miles/gallon or kilometers/hour), in fractions (2/3), and to designate more than one choice (he/she went to play in the park). Virgules are used to indicate line breaks when quoting poetry (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate.) and to separate directories and pages on the World Wide Web: (http://servername.com/directory/page).
Many contemporary poets use the / mid-line as a way of altering the movement of a poem, to create a pause, or to divide or compress the meaning of the words that precede and follow it. In John Forbes’ “The Blue” the / arrives to punctuate the anticlimax, to allow us to gather our breath, to divide thoughts without isolating them, to change register and moods.
The Blue
by John Forbes