“Inhale/Exhale”

Volume Two, Issue One, Summer 2021

Cover design by Charlotte Bravin Lee

VOLUME #2, ISSUE #1: “Inhale/Exhale” Overview

In this issue, we feature essays, poetry, and artworks centered on the inhalation and exhalation of breath. To inhale is to feel oneself intimately within one’s surroundings, a means of inspiration, corporeally filling one’s lungs and mentally arousing creative energies. To exhale is an expulsion of spirit, accompanying a whisper, song, or cry. Breathing is so necessary that it is generally an unconscious activity, an innate action, of being alive. Whether noticed or unnoticed, most simply, breath is the process of taking air into and expelling it from our lungs. Primarily focused on the contemporary importance of breath, the contributions to Venti’s fourth issue draw out the many aspects of respiration as an intimate, communal force — encompassing the political, historical, physical, poetic, and aesthetic capacities of breathing.

Dedication

2020 has been host to multiple crises in the air. They are all too familiar by now: amidst global climate catastrophe, a virus that targets our lungs has affected lives, economies, and sharply refigured our social and political atmospheres. Simultaneously, the death of a Black man at the hands of the police has laid bare the conditions of austerity and violence that the United States’ racialized poor must endure.

Though having inspired many who believe in a future where people might one day be allowed to breathe easy, these tragedies continue to stifle the air of thousands across the globe. We take this moment to thank medical workers for their tireless efforts to heal us from a devastating pandemic; we thank those who continue to do the work and speak out, holding us all in bated breath for the change we know is yet to come. We also take a moment of silence to recognize and remember all those who have lost their breath in 2020.

It is to these people, and to those who love and continue to fight for them — for all of us — that Venti is humbly dedicated.

We recognize these events could neither be fully spoken to nor accounted for by a dedication. At its best, intellectual dialogue supplements and informs action. Venti, in its simple bid to think about the air, might be just one tool among many for weathering this tragic, tempestuous, yet hopeful moment.

As we continue to move through the topic of air, we believe it is our duty not only to mourn but to also derive inspiration.

Read Online Now

“Inhale/Exhale”

table of contents

Dedication