The Usefulness of Hippopotamus
A Humorous Chapbook for Trying Times
Its poems functioning as antidotes for trying times, The Usefulness of Hippopotamus is a good-natured collection.
Vincent J. Tomeo’s quirky poetry collection The Usefulness of Hippopotamus confronts pandemic-era limitations with lightness.
The short poems within include unusual imagery, wordplay, and a tendency toward mischief. Inventive vignettes abound, related to refrigerated food, artwork, and other inanimate items as they leave their usual assigned places and behave badly: “Spinach slapped spaghetti in the face” and “Leftover pizza screamed, / Eat me cold!” Elsewhere, memorials come to life: “A crucifix bowed to a Madonna statue” and “A massive statue did a split.” Active images render the book’s fantastical worlds palpable here and elsewhere, as where, at the bottom of a toaster oven, a cockroach becomes “hundreds of tiny legs scattered in flames.”
Original images, as of “moonbows” in a poem about using medical marijuana for relieving the pain of multiple sclerosis, give the text some verve. However, while the title poem does employ rhymes and clear meters in its vivid opening lines, musicality is sparse in the collection as a whole. Instead of stylistic flourishes and familiar forms, the poems rely on fun twists to create their momentum.
A few poems also veer off from the book’s straightforward track into coded territory, though, holding the audience at too great a distance. For instance, “Nevada Wedding,” a six-line poem, begins with what sounds like a Comic Con wedding and ends with a non sequitur about space people who like gambling. Laments about the particular frustrations of being a poet also have esoteric reach, though the book’s treatments of arcane submission routes, long waits, and impersonal rejections that muffle creative processes are evocative.
The poems’ punch lines vary from outlandish to subtle and ironic. “Notes on a Poetry Reading at the Library,” for example, goes for the latter effect, as a librarian advises that “cookies, milk, and coffee,” rather than the poetry, will “usually draw a large crowd.” And irony features in in a consistent manner as well, both in deadpan deliveries and with conversational, kind examples of it appearing. A few poems hint at deeper reflections beneath their humor, too, as in the list poem “Things My Mother Would Say or Ask as I Got Older,” which builds from comic, familiar maternal reminders about clean underwear to reveal the mother’s shame over her family’s poverty.
The Usefulness of Hippopotamus is an appealing poetry collection that works to lighten burdened hearts and minds with humor.
Reviewed by
Michele Sharpe
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
