In studies of Canadian Prairie literature and in surveys of the development and outstanding achievements of Canadian fiction, W. O. Mitchell's novel Who Has Seen the Wind has been uniformly praised for its lyrically evocative style. (p. 221)

There are many passages in the novel that haunt the reader's imagination because of their rhythmic qualities and musical sounds. (p. 222)

The poetry of the prairies is nowhere better captured than in the description of the landscape on the final pages of the book…. The rhyme, alliteration, consonance and assonance, combined with both syntactical structures inverted for heightened rhetorical impact and metrical effects designed to enhance meaning, attest to a creator whose ear is finely attuned to sound…. (pp. 222-23)

Emotional intensity in the novel is established and sustained by a variety of devices employed by the lyric poet: Mitchell makes frequent use of synaesthesia, particularly striking imagery and figurative language...