"Carl Tracie, geographer, has done what no other researcher of any ilk has even attempted. No one has ever written a book on Canadian prairie poetry, not until now that is. We have books on Canadian poetry, and we have books on the Canadian prairie, but none on the poetry from the prairie. Even essays on the poetry are scarce. That alone would make Shaping a World Already Made a signal event." Dennis Cooley "Tracie carefully elucidates how poetry gives us a fuller perspective of the region. In these essays, we are given the essence of many poets' deeply felt conceptions of the prairie landscape transformed imaginatively into words. Many will be grateful to have this sensitive and insightful study of how some of Canada's most perceptive poets have reflected on the prairies—a landscape, in Tracie's words, that is still shaping." John Warkentin