Phonotactics

Barbara Sher Tinsley, Ph.D. (Stanford’83), has applied her academic, artistic, and literary knowledge, musical gifts, and love of nature to creating Phonotactics, The Sounds of Poetry. She is a singer of the broad culture, the personal, of family life, sensuality, history, philosophy, place, and the significance of a well-rounded life.

The seemingly simplest of her poems are sometimes the deepest; the most complex appearing may be easier. Satire, humor, tenderness. These are her tactics of poetic sound, our surroundings, thoughts. Her surround sound is not in theaters, but in experience.

A Fulbright Fellow and resident (two years) of Paris, Florence, Italy’s Tyrol, and Almuñecar, Spain, where net menders gathered each morning, inspired a painting and a poem. Her long residence in California’s Bay Area has enriched her life.

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, she has published four books on European history; three on poetry, (another forthcoming); a novel on Italian culture; and articles in various encyclopedias and academic journals. 

Her biography appears in Who’s Who in America and she is listed in The Dictionary of American Philosophers.  

Dr. Tinsley’s poems on language, philosophy, love, writing, music, history, geology, archaeology, astronomy, insomnia, business, family, hacking, fake news, violent movies, computers, gardens, art, contentment, literary criticism, let us  meet not just the poet, but ourselves. For, as Aristotle thought best, she deals with universals, our shared humanity. 

Her first two poetry collections are Art, Passion, Poetry (2015), and Streaming Consciousness (2016). The fourth, Travelling in Place ... and to Other Places, will appear shortly.  

As one perceives from my dedication, music was on my mind – my uncles’ and my own – to create poetry that is truly musical, with meter, rhyme, and compelling themes.

Phonotactics was a word I discovered thumbing through my dictionary while looking for another word. I had no idea what it meant, but learned that sound involves tactics and techniques, all involved in poetry. 

My own poems are quite varied, from Renaissance villanelles and sonnets to philosophical musings on great thinkers. The poetry honors historical monuments to monuments dedicated to man’s cultural achievements, and to their corruption or destruction by barbarians, old and modern.

My first two poetry collections are Art, Passion, Poetry (2015), and Streaming Consciousness (2016). The fourth, Travel...