I’ve been thinking about breath lately, and the ways in which one’s own breath reflects the mind: the long, slow breaths of peacefulness; the shallow pant of illness or pain; the fizzy hyperventilation of joy, of falling in love.

Words are just the same. The other night I took a poem about running and gave it meter, a thudding rhythm of iambs that launch themselves up at the end off an anapest.

Satisfying work, that.