A comparative study of breath and breathing as a core poetic and compositional principle in modern literature.Breathing and its rhythmsliminal syncopal and usually inconspicuoushave become a core poetic compositional principle in modern literature. Examining moments when breaths punctuations cessations inhalations or exhalations operate at the limits of meaningful speech Stefanie Heine explores how literary texts reflect their own mediality production and reception in alluding to and incorporating pneumatic rhythms respiratory sound and silent pauses. Through close readings of works by a series of pairsJack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg Robert Musil and Virginia Woolf Samuel Beckett and Sylvia Plath and Paul Celan and Herta MllerPoetics of Breathing suggests that each offers a different conception of literary or poetic breath as a precondition of writing.