From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place

The author of The Island of the White Cow recounts her discovery of and her growing attachment to the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York, describing the area's history and culture.

"I have never really belonged to an American landscape," declares poet and essayist Tall ( The Island of the White Cow: Memories of an Irish Island ) at the outset of this well-observed meditation on the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, to which she moved in 1982. Shifting between personal observations and literary/historical reflections, she describes her attachment to a place both beguiling and benighted. "Geneva has many of the griefs of a city . . . but none of the advantages," she laments, but as she ruminates on the importance of a home, she finds comfort in the natural beauty around her. Though Tall is a fluent guide, her memoir suffers from a certain bloodlessness: her search for home seems mainly a mental construct, with a paucity of human characters. In the end, when she reports how her family, seeking a "more lively, responsive human community," has moved to the nearby college town of Ithaca, we sense what she has left out.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In The Island of the White Cow (1985), Tall recorded her five-year stay on an island off the coast of Ireland. Here, less successfully, she tells of her ten years in the Finger Lakes area of New York State. Tall came to the region as an academic, with no roots there and no reason for the move beyond the vagaries of employment. Her experience in Ireland gave her a sense of a community linked to the soil, to centuries-old traditions from before recorded history. But in Geneva, New York, she found herself a stranger in a land that had been stolen from its earliest inhabitants and then systematically mistreated by later residents. The author's attempt to re-create a sense of the territory takes her into its history as a breeding ground for religion (Joseph Smith laid the foundations of Mormonism here); the complicated jockeying among colonial governments for rights to its land; its placement along the most-traveled routes for settlers heading west; its deep resonance in the traditions of its Native American inhabitants, especially the tribes of the Iroquois League; and even the recent history of its well-known Taylor wineries. But, unfortunately, Tall seems more interested in making historical allusions and cultural comparisons to societies from all over the globe than in focusing on the specific place and its inhabitants: There are few contemporary character portraits in these pages. When the author discusses modern times, she's usually content with superficial (if well-deserved) criticism of the rootlessness and spiritual poverty of our society. Compellingly written and deeply felt, but overly abstract and offering little real sense of the region or its people today. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Tall, a self-described rootless individual, settles along Seneca Lake, one of the Finger Lakes in New York State. From this locale, she writes of the geography and history of the region. She uses the setting to launch into a discussion of the importance of place to humankind and reflects on sacred ground and boundaries, among other topics. She artfully interweaves the unique geography and geology of the area, the history and mythology of the Native Americans who claimed the land as their place, with the history of white settlements and the growth and decline of the economy--evident especially in architecture--to assemble a literate account of the importance of place. Tall uses her well-honed skills as an observer and poet to bring the reader a thought-provoking, pleasurable memoir. A good choice for public libraries and those with regional interest.
- David Schau, Kanawha Cty. P.L., Charleston, W.Va.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.