{"id":10140,"date":"2013-06-20T16:38:26","date_gmt":"2013-06-20T11:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wing-it-john-wings-almost-somewhere-else\/"},"modified":"2013-06-20T16:38:26","modified_gmt":"2013-06-20T11:38:26","slug":"wing-it-john-wings-almost-somewhere-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/wing-it-john-wings-almost-somewhere-else\/","title":{"rendered":"Wing It: John Wing\u2019s Almost Somewhere Else"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like most poets, John Wing has a day job. His is a little more unique than most: more than two decades ago he relocated from Ontario to California to begin a career as a stand-up comedian, becoming rather successful\u2014he\u2019s racked up over 150 television appearances\u2014though perhaps not quite a household name. I\u2019ve long suspected that in the insular world of Canadian poetry there\u2019s a resistance when (semi-) famous outsiders, particularly musicians or the odd Pope, tread on our hallowed turf. But unlike poetry dilettantes like Gord Downie or John Paul II, Wing is in it for the long haul, having produced six collections since 1998.<em> Almost Somewhere Else<\/em> finds Wing (he dropped the \u201cJr.\u201d from both his books and his act awhile ago) in a reflective frame of mind. The opening of \u201cMemory\u201d might well serve as a microcosm for the whole book: \u201cEverything is arranged \/ idiotically. Chance \/ runs this library. \/\/ My eyes are closed \/ but my memory isn\u2019t tired. \/ He wants to play.\u201d As such, while the subject matter ranges from western Canadian geography to catching bats to an elegy for fellow comedian Eric Tunney to a riff on Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnet 18, the world-weary tone is fairly consistent. Wing writes of day-to-day life in free-verse colloquial language; his poems are generally short and easily digestible with an undercurrent of rueful sadness running throughout, though, unlike his comedy, they do not reduce situations to a punch line. Looking at his new passport photo, \u201cso far from the face I know to be mine,\u201d he fears that the authorities \u201cwill come to their senses \/ and bar me from everywhere.\u201d In \u201cMilestones\u201d he ruminates that \u201cage is a number that denotes experience, \/ respect, and a rapidly accumulating pile of junk,\u201d and within the cycles of time the \u201cnight you fall in love will pass so slowly \/ you\u2019ll relive it as it happens.\u201d Poems often start with an observation that gives rise to a speculative flight of fancy. So, the sight of \u201cRoman Ruins\u201d leads to conjecture about the slaves who built them; thoughts of his wintery hometown lead to various childhood memories, \u201cwhispered \/ legends through unforgiven time\u201d; or the improbable sight of a statue of Gandhi \u201cIn Saskatoon\u201d makes him wonder if there is a reciprocal one of Diefenbaker in India. The book closes with a suite called \u201cSexual History\u201d that recalls a youthful time when sex was as much about curiosity, the rush of excitement and discovery, as fulfillment: \u201cbefore I knew much \/ but was confident \/ it was enough.\u201d Wing\u2019s early books sometimes read like a comedian writing poems, especially as the comic\u2019s life featured prominently as subject matter, but <em>Almost Somewhere Else<\/em> reads like a poet writing poems; there\u2019s a calm assurance here in the language and the casually miserable perspective never overstays its welcome.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Christopher Doda<\/strong> is the author of two poetry collections, <em>Among Ruins<\/em> and <em>Aesthetics Lesson<\/em>. He is currently working on a book of glosas based on heavy metal lyrics.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/?page_id=1295\">Arc<\/a>: Stand Up Poetry<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like most poets, John Wing has a day job. His is a little more unique than most: more than two decades ago he relocated from Ontario to California to begin a career as a stand-up comedian, becoming rather successful\u2014he\u2019s racked up over 150 television appearances\u2014though perhaps not quite a household name. I\u2019ve long suspected that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1945,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"10454,10164,10104,9814","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1484,2043],"tags":[],"genre":[21],"publisher":[239],"issue":[],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[],"topic":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10140"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10140"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=10140"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=10140"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=10140"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=10140"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=10140"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=10140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}