Poet · Archivist · Historian

Vincent J. Tomeo

Author of My Cemetery Friends

908Poems & essays published
105Awards
135Public readings
4.7 from 50 ratings on Amazon · $7.11 paperback · 80 pages · Bookside Press
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Also in French: Mes Amis du Cimetière and L'utilité de l'hippopotame (both Kindle ebooks)

My Cemetery Friends book cover by Vincent J. Tomeo ★ 4.7 · 50 ratings
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908Poems & essays
105Awards
135Public readings
36Years teaching history
Two books

One garden, and one hippopotamus

Thirty years of walks through a cemetery in Queens, and a chapbook of poems written to get through a hard season.

Cover of My Cemetery Friends by Vincent J. Tomeo

My Cemetery Friends

A garden of encounters at Mount Saint Mary in Queens, New York

A prose and poetry memoir of the people he met while walking the same cemetery for more than thirty years. 80 pages, 4.7 stars from 50 ratings on Amazon.

Read about this book →
Cover of The Usefulness of Hippopotamus by Vincent J. Tomeo

The Usefulness of Hippopotamus

A humorous chapbook for trying times

Short poems written during the pandemic while he was being treated for cancer. 62 pages, 4.6 stars from 36 ratings on Amazon.

Read about this book →
What he keeps coming back to

The same six things, for thirty years

Read either book and you will notice the subjects repeat. That is not a shortage of material. It is what he has decided is worth the ink.

01

The garden and the stones

Mount Saint Mary in Queens, and the long walks through it that turned into thirty years of notebooks.

02

The ones in uniform

Marines, firefighters, and the fallen he has named in poems, including a Marine whose grave became a poem read in France.

03

The unnamed

The graves nobody visits, and the case he makes that the living still owe them something.

04

His mother and his aunt

The family plot that started the whole practice, and the reason the walk never really ended.

05

Humor as medicine

The hippopotamus poems, written through a pandemic and a cancer treatment, and printed without apology.

06

Peace and flowers

The sign-off he uses in letters, and the note both books end on. Love and light, he says, and he means it.

Awards & reviews

What the reviewers said

Independent review journals, an international poetry congress, and readers on Amazon. Nothing here is paid placement.

"Tomeo strikes me as not just a brilliant poet but also a daring thinker who boldly stands up on a subject which is seldom talked about."

Ephantus M. · Pacific Book Review
✓ Notable Book

Recommended

US Review of Books · My Cemetery Friends
✓ Reviewed

Excellent Merit

Hollywood Book Reviews · My Cemetery Friends
✓ Awarded

Best Overall Free Verse

United Poets Laureate International · World Congress of Poets, Bangkok, 2018
✓ For "I Visited the Grave of Marine Michael D. Glover"

Honorable Mention

Rainer Maria Rilke International Poetry Competition
✓ International

Sculpted in marble

"A View from a Tower in Calabria, Italy", carved into stone in Italy
✓ Italy
4.7 ★
from 50 ratings on Amazon
4.6 ★
from 36 ratings for the chapbook
135
public readings, at home and abroad

Take the walk yourself

Start with the garden. My Cemetery Friends is in paperback now, and the hippopotamus poems are a short, funny follow-up for anyone who needs one.

$7.11  ·  paperback · 80 pages · 50 ratings at 4.7 stars

Buy on Amazon

ISBN-13 978-1778833526 · Bookside Press · May 13, 2024

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