Can You Dig It? (review)

The "dig" of the title is a play on words, since the twenty-one poems in this collection treat scientists who dig up old things, the artifacts and bones they find, and the creatures whose traces are being unearthed. That means a lot of prehistory, with poems focusing on a variety of dinosaurs ("Stegosaurus," "Diplodocus") and proto-humans ("Greetings" and "Tutus" feature Cro-Magnon behavior), as well as the occasional museum visit ("Hugs") and wannabe archeologist ("Bartholomew Huggins McVigger"). Florian's Dinothesaurus (BCCB 2/09) is pretty much the high-water mark for poetic prehistory, and the verses here don't meet that standard, with strained logic, scansion bobbles, or aficionado-offending terminology (the brontosaurus brigade is out in full) impairing many of them. There's still enjoyment to be found, however, in the kid-appealing subject matter, comic turns, and amusing verbiage, with entertaining entries such as "Coprolite" (perhaps the first ever poem devoted to the study of fossilized poo) and "Teddy Bone" (a cave kid yearns to trade his lot for a contemporary kid's bedtime) reliable sources of amusement. The art offers plenty of lively comedy, with bug-eyed critters and humans worthy of Victoria Chess roaming landscapes past and present; charcoal-soft edging and shading provides dimension to the planes of deep colors (so deep, in fact, that a few pages are downright hard to see), with individual elements possessing the dimensionality of collaged layering. Despite the flaws, this might be an entertaining diversion from the serious in a unit on prehistory, or an additional poetic amusement for readers fond of Dinothesaurus.