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ALBERTO PARISI
Siena · Harvard PhD ’23 · Koper · Kobe · Florence
I study breath, air, and atmosphere in European and Japanese philosophy and poetry. I design and build digital products using AI.
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Alberto Parisi
Research

Poetry & Breath

Modern poetry and the material world

Why is modern poetry so full of breath, wind, and air?

Poetry is often understood as the expression of an inner self: feelings and thoughts finding their way into words. But modern European poetry also tells another story. From Romanticism through Symbolism and Modernism, breath and wind become ways of rediscovering what that self is.

spirit A historical question
A word once connected to breath, whose separation from matter is part of this research.

My argument is that these poems return the supposedly immaterial spirit to the air. The self that emerges is respiratory: it takes shape through exchanges with its surroundings, rather than existing apart from them. Breath is not just an image for an inner life. It changes how poetry understands the relation between human and nonhuman life.

Stimmung German
Mood or attunement, explored here through nerves, poetry, and atmosphere.

This happens in what poems say, but also in their sounds, rhythms, and pauses. The poem does not merely describe a breathing self; its language participates in the movement between a body and the world.

respiratory poetics Research approach
Reading poetic form through its relationship to breath and atmosphere.

Reading European poetry alongside Japanese poetry makes this movement perceptible in new ways. The kireji—the cutting words and exclamations of haiku—can interrupt an unfolding meaning while opening the poem onto the situation around it. They also help us hear differently the breaths and breaks of European verse.

kireji Japanese · 切れ字
A cutting word: a particle or exclamation that introduces a break in a poem.
Connections
Breath & SpiritThe philosophical questions opened by breathing.Kireji and CaesuraBreath and poetic form in Japanese and European traditions.TeachingPoetry as part of my teaching.Intention, Attention & WillTone, rhythm, and breath as ways of thinking through poetry.AtmosphereAtmosphere in modern poetry.

Research

Alberto Parisi