Poetry. In A NORTH ATLANTIC WALL the poetry is drawn from fieldnotes, ragged prose, some passages displaying a resonant, if fragmentary, intensity. The elements of A NORTH ATLANTIC WALL may appear to be disjointed, but the order is that of a periplum and the resonance is often transhistorical, reaching toward a conception of an immanent domain beyond the serried mountaintops. Two landscapes give particular shape to the itinerary of A NORTH ATLANTIC WALL: the Camino from Negreira near Santiago de Compostela to Fisterra (that is going away from Santiago de Compostela and toward Fisterra, the western most point of continental Europe) and the footpaths in the vicinity of Gósol in the Pre-Pyrenees. Other sites form segments of an imaginary chain between Fisterra and Gósol, notably the valley of the Curue¤o in Northern León. Trace a line from Fisterra, extending through the mountains of Northern León (the Picos de Europa), and continuing easterly along the Pyrenees to Gósol. That line, wavering as it does, separates Spain from the rest of Europe.