Travelling in Place . . . and to Other Places

Author Barbara Sher Tinsley grew up in Gloversville, a 19th-century town in upstate New York.

“It had an excellent Carnegie Library, which I visited after the second grade all alone. I was turned on to literature by the story hour in that library. While the town produced a great American novelist (Richard Russo), it produced me, too, an historian, a poet. I attribute my writing interests to an excellent education beginning in this town, and to a happy home life with a huge victory garden, giving me a life-long love for gardening.”

A pandemic discourages travel. Who enjoys grocery shopping? Watching grim newscasts? Reading forgotten novels?

Travelling in Place, etc., recalls our past, allowing for post-pandemic planning circling our yard, relaxing in bed. There, I “travel” to the third grade. (#1”Travel Companions”); relive a favorite childhood day (#21 “Picking Apples Near Cooperstown, N.Y.”) or, as an adult, recall a book club (#28) meeting when some members didn’t read the book; didn’t understand it if they had.

Travelling to “Other Places” tugs on our yearning to escape staying “in place.” My frequent trips to Western Europe (#91 “From an Old Travel Journal”) carries you from Normandy to Rome, and may remind you of your travels; your shaky mastery of foreign languages; your certain mastery of self!

I travel here in my poetry in two ways: One, by reflecting on my past and present; its richness. This I call mental “travel.” Such are poem #1, “Travelling Companions,” and #2, “Porch Pillars.”

Others include #17, “Hill Climbing,” and #18, “Hearts and Gardens,” plus the plots of two novels, #7, “Holden,” and #86, “The Golden Bowl.” For reading, also see #28, “Book Club.”

Trips to a Mozart opera or to Georgia O’Keefe’s or Vermeer’s art exhibits in San Francisco are journeys, too.

“Trips” to the German Renaissance (#73) and to classical Greece (#19) also moved me, after majoring in Renaissance-Reformation history and having written a book on classical antiquity, several on the Reformation.

Is this travel? Decide for yourself, reader!

Her extensive European travel (France, Spain, Italy) reveals poetry of conventional travel and residence, as in # 91, “From an Old Travel Journal,” containing a series of thirteen related poems, from Frankfurt, to Normandy, Paris, Torino, Genoa, and Rome.

(About the Author)

World traveler Barbara Sher Tinsley has been a professor of French, humanities, world literature, history, and English composition at Stanford, Santa Clara University, San Jose State, Stephens College, and several community colleges in Northern California. Now retired, she has published four books on European history; a novel on Italian culture; and articles in various encyclopedias and academic journals. This is her fourth book of poetry.