A Cup of Nevermind

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia and is the
co-editor of Four Realities: Poets of Northern B.C.

John Wing, Jr., is a poet who works out of Los Angeles as standup comic,
but there is certainly nothing lightweight or frivolous about this
collection. The poems are short, personal, anecdotal, and mature. Some
are drawn from Wing’s memories of growing up in Sarnia; others are
about his current family life with wife and children. Show business does
not play a part in the book.

Throughout the collection, there is a wryness that borders on the
bitter, such as in his recollection of high school: “High school is
like bad poetry, / embarrassingly indelible. You / do not live, you
throb. You are / a bell that never stops ringing” (“This I
Remember”). His nostalgia is tinged with the inevitable sense of loss:
“The nuns have gone from here and now. No sisters / crowd the second
pew. No convent / there from which to walk. / Just aging priests, and
better / parking for the flock” (“Attrition”). (That little
rhyme—“walk” / “flock”—is typical of the way he likes to
embed traditional flourishes in a relatively freeform style.)

A Cup of Nevermind is an enjoyable book. It contains precise, short
observational poems that deliver a clear impression of life as it is
lived. Any poet who ends his “Letter to a Critic” with the line “I
hate you” has my respect.