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.