One of the distinguishing characteristics of Abdurraqib’s prose poem is the way he inserts those slash marks-
-/–. The front slash is usually used to show where a line break is in a poem. Literary critics use it so that when
they’re publishing an essay about poetry, they can show readers where the line breaks are in the poem they’re
quoting. But Abdurraqib just inserts them rather than producing actual line breaks. It’s a big difference!
For example, instead of this…
listen darlings
there is a sky
to be pulled down
into our bowls
…we get this:
listen darlings / there is a sky / to be pulled down / into our bowls /
Abdurraqib places those line break forward slash marks between lines rather than using
ordinary punctuation or making his work into a poem. Why do you think he did that?

Sample Solution