So Far

by Fred Wah

prose (on poetry & other matters)

112 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1991

About the author

Fred Wah has been involved with a number of literary magazines over the years, such as Open Letter and West Coast Line. Recent books are the biofiction Diamond Grill (1996), Faking It: Poetics and Hybridity (2000), a collection of essays, and Sentenced to Light (2008), a collection of poetic image/text projects. He splits his time between the Kootenays in southeastern B.C. and Vancouver.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M.]

double bone and all around the fish images of northern lakes all of them or each one freezing over with latitude and the double bone comes out of the mouth with a warning to the tongue and throat then what about the fish scale skin and human face frozen thereafter or before in such a fish thinking ahead of the fisherman the catch and the slip of the tongue to make the hook hold curious places in taste here such ice water imagining cast up into the mouth I mean from the driftwood and all that grey and white breeding

- First Pickerel, pg. 20

* * *

Everyone I know here
gets dressed up for winter
dreaming

so much brown pink, so
much cold
Mary's scarf, little fur toque

red coat boat white
"writing my seeing"
riding my sea out

- Accidents of Colour I, pg. 31

* * *

Her mind and life-
time, yearning

for her life's
mind on it, heart

dance, literally
with her mouth

shoulders too
today years ago

I married her.
Outside, the distant glaciers

crack and groan
with the same desire.

- Her House, pg. 42

* * *

Where I live
when I wake up in the morning's dark
I listen for the plow down on the road
to find out
if it snowed overnight
or not to the
soft
snow's
silence
plow's
scraping, distance
distant
in the valley

- Weather, pg. 53