"To say something about poetry, and by extension of course to write anything about
anything at all, is the hardest thing, because what do I know: nothing. Anything that can be said must
immediately in good conscience be contradicted. Nothing about a body is constant. Not its breath,
its blood, not its skin or cells. For me nothing about a poem is constant either."
Ali, Kazim. "Ersatz Everything: The Value of Meaning." The American Poetry Review 37, no. 4 (2008): 53. Accessed June 3, 2021
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JSTOR
“For example, the rule that describes the relationship between pairs of English words like breath and breathe, loss and lose, and grief and grieve (minimally) specifies a change in word-final voicing, a change in syntactic category, and concomitant changes in meaning.”
Ryan Lepic & Carol Padden. “A-morphous iconicity.” In Claire Bowern, Laurence Horn & Raffaella Zanuttini (eds.), On looking into words (and beyond), 489–516. Berlin: Language Science Press, 2017. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.495463. p. 496.
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Language Science Press
"…out into the San Diego sun, was priceless. He told me later that when he took his first breath of truly fresh air, every molecule bombarded his senses. Cherry blossoms. Fresh cut grass. Espresso from the coffee wagon. He wept when he heard the familiar sound of a song sparrow calling for its mate…"
Strathdee, Steffanie A., and Thomas L. Patterson. The Perfect Predator: A Scientists Race to save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir. London: Hachette Books, 2020. p. 279.
theperfectpredator.com
“in the air, when spoken, words seem like a dream
pulsating through ether in blue melodies of tongues
weaving inside sentences, packed with local
idioms, carved from blue spaces by human breath,
sounds rooted in voices here evoke metaphors
coursing blood-deep, form ancient tribal gestures”
Troupe, Quincy. “Sentences.” Errançities. Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 2012.
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Coffee House Press
“but poetry still lives somewhere in airstreams evoking creative breath
lives in the restless sea speaking a miscegenation of musical tongues”
Troupe, Quincy. “Errançities.” Errançities. Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 2012.
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Coffee House Press
“go slow into slow dance of what
you are
go slow into beauty
of space & time & distance
measure
every breath that you breathe
for it is precious
holy
go free into sun/lit days”
Troupe, Quincy. “Poem for Friends.” Transcircularities: New and Selected Poems. Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 2002. p.9-10
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Eco-poetry.org
“every second, minute, every hour, yes, black lives do matter, alive
have always mattered, breathing, magical, beautiful, alive,
living does matter for those who know meaning lives here
when lungs take in breath, makes us whole, creative, does matter
when air is sweet beneath the sun, wondrous, magical as music, poetry,
yes, black lives do matter, all life matters every day light rises”
Troupe, Quincy. “A Dirge for Michael Brown, Tamir Rice & Trayvon Martin.” Seduction: New Poems, 2013-2018. Evanston, IL: TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2019. p. 31.
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Northwestern University Press
“It is well to recall likewise such semi-philosophic conceptions as that of the pneuma or ‘psychical breath of life’ of later Greco-Roman philosophy. The inextricable entanglement, historically, of breath and air with spirits is also worth remembering, especially the continuance of this into the modern period of scientific analysis, unmistakeable traces of which are seen in the writings of William Harvey and the foremost physiologists of the era to which he belonged.”
Ritter, William Emerson. An Organismal Theory of Consciousness. Boston, 1919: Gorham Press. p. 81.
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Google Books
It is an irregular dancing—always shifting—step of walk on slabs and scree. The breath and eye are always following this uneven rhythm.”
Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990. p. 113.
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BeWild ReWild
“Language is not a carving, it's a curl of breath, a breeze in the pines.
Metaphors of ‘nature as books’ are not only inaccurate, they are pernicious.”
Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990. p. 69.
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BeWild ReWild
“Our bodies are wild. The involuntary quick turn of the head at a shout, the vertigo at looking off a precipice, the heart-in-the-throat in a moment of danger, the catch of the breath, the quiet moments relaxing, staring, reflecting—all universal responses of this mammal body.”
Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990. p. 16.
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BeWild ReWild
“So here the key is in the ‘spell’ & in the belief behind the ‘spell’—or in a whole system of beliefs, in magic, in the power of sound & breath & ritual to move an object toward ends determined by the poet-magus.”
Rothenberg, Jerome. Technicians of the Sacred a Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1969. p. 386.
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Internet Archive
“When my songs first became
when the sky was made
when the earth was made
the breath of the dancers against me made only of down:
when they heard about my life
where they got their life
where they heard about me:
it stands.”
Rothenberg, Jerome. Technicians of the Sacred a Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1969. p. 209. Pliny Earle Goddard, “The Masked Dancers of the Apache,” Holmes Anniversary Volume (Washington, 1916), pp. 133-35. “Songs of the Masked Dancers” (Apache)
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Internet Archive
“Voices packed tightly within the letters
In the voices, there is only breath
Only emptiness discreetly returned to silence.”
Rothenberg, Jerome. "A Round of Renshi and the Poet as Other: An Experiment in Poesis." Critical Inquiry 37, no. 4 (2011): 779. Accessed June 7, 2021. doi:10.1086/660991.
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JSTOR
“What sort of world is it that obliges us to take into account, at the same time and in the same breath, the nature of things, technologies, sciences, fictional beings, religions large and small, politics, jurisdictions, economies and unconsciousnesses?”
Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993. p. 229.
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Harvard University Press
“It juxtaposes the auditory and visual manifestations of breath, moves the air of the environment (by fan) to render it tactile, and ties the rhythmic movement of breathing to that of the ocean.”
Kaprow, Allan, and Jeff Kelley. “Performing Life.” Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1993. pp. 196-7.
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University of California Press
“they read they speak they eat
they move their hands
their breath is on the glass
is moving
toward a fruit tree
beside a river”
Antin, David, and Charles Bernstein. “The Passengers.” A Conversation with David Antin. New York City, NY: Granary Books, 2002. p. 29.
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University of Pennsylvania