Temporary Homelands

These 12 essays by Walt Whitman Award-winning poet Deming are part personal memoir and part record of her quest for a spiritual home in the world of nature. She writes with eloquence about favorite places--Grand Manan Island in Canada, where she has summered for 35 years, southeast Alaska and Arizona, which is her present home. ``Inside the Wolf'' is a moving account of her father's decline and death. Deming, a descendent of Nathaniel Hawthorne, muses on the forests as her forebears might have seen them; she reminisces about homesteading as a single mother on an isolated Vermont farm. In the penultimate essay, she discourses on poetry and nature. Readers who enjoy Annie Dillard or Ann Zwinger will likely appreciate this book. (Aug.)