cover image A Man, a Woman & a Hippopotamus

A Man, a Woman & a Hippopotamus

Selima Hill. Bloodaxe, $24 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-1-78037-752-0

The surreal and humorous poems of Hill’s latest (after Men Who Feed Pigeons) include 10 sequences mining the links between people, animals, and the urban and natural world. A series of “Self-Portraits” succeed to varying degrees, many sounding like sketches for poems or the punch line of a joke, as in “Self-portrait with a Hornet” (“My sister was terrified of hornets./ I made a sign: HORNETS WELCOME HERE!”) or “And Another Question” (“He always says I ask/ ‘too many questions’ –/ but how many questions/ are ‘too many’ questions?”). Others appear like statements of fact, as in “Self-Portrait with a Mosquito”: “It reappears/ and stabs me in the cheek// although I have done nothing./ Just lain here.” Some moments are genuinely droll, like when the speaker in “The Spider” remarks, “Don’t worry about it, he says irritably. But I’m not worried about it. On the contrary, I enjoy being stared at from behind the mugs.” “Rich and Famous” delivers a satiric blow with great economy: “Rich and famous,/ floating on his yacht,// just him/ and his incontinence pad.” Readers may find it challenging to grasp a greater arc or meaning, as many of these brief entries seem to deliberately avoid deeper reading. However, enthusiasts of pithy poems should proceed with confidence. (Dec.)