The Usefulness of Hippopotamus is a collection of free-verse poems that span many topics and often end with wry twists.

Vincent J. Tomeo’s collection includes real-world encounters, surreal incidents, poems about poetry, and more. Its subtitle explains its purpose: to find humor in trying situations, which can range from troublesome toenails to romantic love.

In “Fungi,” for example, the speaker reports: “My feet are fungi/ My toenails lean a little to the left, growing hard as wood/ Multi-colored, black, red, and blue/ […] My ballet dancer days are over.” The well-crafted and amusing “Refrigerator” describes all the food in the fridge breaking into a fight: “Spinach slapped spaghetti in the face/ […] eggs scrambled for dear life.”

Not every poem tries to amuse, though. For example, “If I Were a Butterfly” imparts a wish to create “a mellifluousness of the mind, of time and space.”

The author has a strong command of language and crafts many memorable descriptions, such as “My dog Rex was part of the wedding party,/ led the procession draped in purple pansies/ and crowned in a Spanish filigree gold tiara” and “A man played the trumpet on graves, Fusion-Jazz-Rock./ Monuments began to move, shake./ A crucifix bowed to a Madonna statue as she curtsied.”

Despite such highlights, though, readers might struggle to understand what this work means as a whole. The poems offer a mix of whimsy, absurdism, and social commentary and vary significantly in tone and sophistication. This leads to a lack of cohesiveness.

Additionally, some of the poems intended to amuse might strike readers as tasteless. For example, one poem describes a mouse “holding on for dear life” as it scurries on an airplane wing, only to be blown off as the plane takes flight. The poem’s final quip seems cruel rather than funny: “Lesson:/ Never fly stowaway.”

While readers will find amusement here, the collection would be enhanced with a firmer focus and more streamlined style of humor.

Also available in hardcover and ebook.