Daniel,
I came to the conclusion that travelling for work was the only way to know a place and its people. Tourism separates you. The only countries I feel close to are the places where I had some working reason to visit. That way you meet people on a genuine level.
I believe all of that is available at home.
I guess I am enriched by my memory of looking out the plane window (no disembarking) in Bombay, and seeing an enormous string of coloured flowers (women) with plastic basins of earth on their heads. They were helping to build a new runway. Other things elsewhere I won't enlarge upon here. They all add something its true. Peer Gynt and Till Eulenspiegel found they had had it all at home after their wandering. But doesn't a real writer find inspiration everywhere? John le Carré needed to travel--I'm glad he did. I suppose poets do too but it's more important to read and think and see and feel.
In the end one brings a contemporary intelligence to what one writes, whether one travels or not. I think political journalists must travel.
Vikram Seth is enriched by travel.
Travelogue poetry would be incredibly boring.
One could claim that a poet must have many sexual partners--and a hell of a lot of them do--but I've never found it added more than narcissism. One of the things I love about Rhina Espaillat's poetry is her sense of home and faithfulness.
Janet
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