Pastoral, narrative, deliberately lyrical, the poetry of Kate Barnes is set solidly in the rural Maine countryside, and in the literary tradition in which she was raised (her father was Henry Beston, her mother Elizabeth Coatsworth). There she lives near the house that Beston made famous in Northern Farm, drawing strength and inspiration from the coastal landscape to steady her through the changing seasons of life.

This is wise and moving verse: not abstract or self-consciously "modern," but clean and convincing - verse, as Robert Creeley has commented, "of a deep and heartfelt clarity." These are poems that examine and celebrate the ingredients of our humanity: friendship and wonder, loneliness and endurance, sexuality and unrequited longing, familial ties and the overriding relationship of the individual to nature, to landscape and animals, and to the living earth itself.

Printed letterpress and featuring six specially commissioned woodcuts by the renowned Vermont artist Mary Azarian, Where the Deer Were is a treasure that combines the best of poetry, art, and fine bookmaking.