Abstract

This research is an inquiry into how concepts of breath, the landscape, and the movement of the soul inform and shape poetic forms in Persian, Mongolian, and Chinese cultures. The research is an analysis of how each tradition conceives of human experience in relation to a living world by means of three contemporary poems that evoke forms such as the ghazal, the long song, and traditional Chinese forms. The research draws on classical literary scholarship, ethnomusicology, and contemporary phenomenology to argue that concepts such as breath operate as a force of relation, landscape appears as a living force, and the movement of the soul is the work of distinct logics in each tradition. Though differing in form and philosophical approach, each conceives of poetry as a site of relation between the human and the more-than-human world around us. As these poems are brought together in this research, they reveal both their differences and their resonances, which could suggest through such approaches to inter-cultural poetics a deeper level of continuities in how humanity conceives of its place within the natural world.