Glenn Bach and Atlas Peripatetic
Glenn Bach is a poet and writer whose long-running Atlas project grew from Atlas Peripatetic, begun in 2003 from the sounds of a morning walk in Long Beach, California. His work draws on sampling, remix, erasure, field observation, and practices associated with visual and sonic art to investigate place, memory, landscape, and movement.
The three preserved poems here—“42,” “75,” and “121”—belong to that early Atlas Peripatetic phase and appeared in Issue 23. Birds, bodies, skate vocabulary, anatomy, and close listening move through the sequence, giving physical motion a compositional role. Readers interested in related approaches can continue through experimental poetry, poetic forms, modern poetry, and the wider contemporary poets archive.
Three poems from Atlas Peripatetic
42
the flurry of birdsong and a whipping of marks
that grow louder and more precise
stronger and more exact
the invisible choir of throat and basin
with the gust of the song of the bird
the choir of the throat of the bird
the choir of birdthroat and beaks
camouflaged in the foliage
of ficus microcarpa Indian Laurel Fig
the flock of birds in proportion
to the flurry songs of bird
to the troop of birds and the straw fire of song
75
blind transfer
of air over the
spine but first
the vert stalls
in the mini-
air grinding air
on the extension
in the fish eye
view of the stucco
wall ride you kick
grab and grind
50-50 in this
backside air front-
side air head
planted ass planted
and transferred
to wall ride stalled
bench
—it was a fluke
the reverse hoop
in the alley grinding
plates to a toe-
stop, the death
of a kiss—
two feet one foot
grab stall plant head
bail watch me
hurt myself not
quite but I love
my helmet
and sometimes
the wheel bites back
121
bird very close
feathers forelimbs hollow bones
very close these beaks without teeth
brushing away particles
very close for the cloacal kiss
in less than a second
breath traveling in one direction
oxygen the same inside as out
these passerines
these song birds
these perching birds so close
I can touch them through the tangle of leaves
through the thicket of green
through the singing tree
through the warm blood
Place, sound, and the expanding Atlas
Bach’s current account of Atlas describes a project that has continued to expand from its Long Beach origins into a long poem shaped by significant places in his life. The preserved Issue 23 texts show an early stage of that larger practice, where observation becomes arrangement and the material of ordinary movement enters the poem at full pressure.
For further context, see Glenn Bach’s Atlas site and the historical Great Works archive, which also records Atlas Peripatetic and its walking-and-sound origins.