“Nothing that is complete breathes.”

— Antonio Porchia

Voces (1943)

Original

Una cosa sana no respira.

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Antonio Porchia 276

Italian Argentinian poet 1885–1968

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

"Root Cellar," ll. 10-11
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)

“Nothing. Jail is about nothing. Completely blank.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei: ‘Shame on Me.’, 2011

“There was a muddy centre before we breathed.
There was a myth before the myth began,
Venerable and articulate and complete.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract
Context: p>The clouds preceded us.There was a muddy centre before we breathed.
There was a myth before the myth began,
Venerable and articulate and complete.From this the poem springs: that we live in a place
That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves
And hard it is in spite of blazoned days.</p

“Nothing important is completely explicable.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Section 3.9
Source: The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)

“There's nothing wrong with the word conspiracy. It just means 'to breathe together'.”

Janeane Garofalo (1964) comedian, actress, political activist, writer

Majority Report, November 10, 2004 broadcast
Majority Report

“One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read - in such a moment, anything can happen.”

Jane Hirshfield (1953) Poet

Source: Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry

“Experience taken into the body, breathed-in, so that reality is the completion of experience, and poetry is what is produced. And life is what is produced.”

Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) poet and political activist

Source: The Life of Poetry (1949), p. 221
Context: Experience taken into the body, breathed-in, so that reality is the completion of experience, and poetry is what is produced. And life is what is produced.
To stand against the idea of the fallen world, a powerful and destructive idea overshadowing Western poetry. In that sense, there is no lost Eden, and God is the future. The child walled-up in our life can be given his growth. In this growth is our security.