How much time do you spend pondering your breath? Maybe a lot if you meditate or practice yoga. Probably quite a bit when your sinuses are clogged or if your respiratory system is compromised. Otherwise though, breath, is not something most people think about very often. It’s automatic. A regular, automatic miracle.

Gayle Brandeis’s Drawing Breath: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Loss (Overcup Press; Feb. 2023) is full of small miracles, although there’s nothing automatic about her writing.

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