TORRIBLE PUNS

Three dozen delights for fans of puns and wordplay.

“Once I stayed awake all night / and wondered what I’d see. / I sat and pondered in the dark / until it dawned on me.” Demonstrating firm command of exact rhymes and rollicking metrics, Torrible’s debut features a set of pungently sharp-witted lyrics. Language lovers who can control their giggles well enough to read on will learn that clocks were not allowed in the library because “they tocked too loud,” meet a circus pony who admits to being “a little hoarse,” discover why leopards are so bad at hide and seek (“They’re always spotted”), and sympathize with a job seeker who “loathed serving coffee despite all the perks. / He dreaded the slow daily grind.” “Have your morning bowl of coal,” a mother train urges her wheeled offspring, “and don’t forget to choo.” Dunn’s breezy images of animals, emblematic items, and light-skinned young folk add gleeful visual notes to the relentless punnery. For any who still don’t get the jokes even after the poems are read aloud (which they beg to be), the author has appended a stolidly literal breakdown of each one at the very end, capped by an invitation to budding punsters to chime in. “Shredded cheddar / melts with ease. / Get your own. / It’s nacho cheese!”

Heaping helpings of clever wordplay, for better or verse.