Among the poets who have adopted and reimagined the William Carlos Williams-Robert Duncan line in Canada, none has so thoroughly sustained and extended the American school's commitment to the local as Fred Wah. The nature of that commitment is summarized in the preposition which provides the title for one of Wah's early books, Among (1972). "Among" is a word with no referent, which does not so much signal connection as a surrounding; it signifies association with, and the word itself is associated with mixing and with joint and reciprocal actions. Wah's home ground is British Columbia's Interior, where he is surrounded, "in a mind of mountains," as he puts it. Wah's reader is always aware of his local geographies, but aware of them as they are perceived in the mind of the observer, as he thinks them, in language, and as the language shapes his thinking. The reader is...