Poem Depot: Aisles of Smiles by Douglas Florian (review)

The estimable poet Douglas Florian returns here in a collection reminiscent of his classic Bing Bang Boing (BCCB 11/94), containing well over 100 short poems partnered with his sturdily eccentric line drawings. The poetic subjects range from the kid-focused (sibling rivalry, nose-picking, cleaning rooms) to the absurd (a sweater for an alien) to the comically tragic (the narrator swallowed by an alligator), and the verses are bright and bouncy and goofy in their short-lined rhymes and compact nature that make them particularly suitable for selective reading aloud. The quality is more variable here than in most of Florian’s collections, though, with stronger entries intermingling with poems where the scansion struggles or the payoff is flat, and there’s some recycling of gags (two poems make jokes about butterflies not having butter, for instance). The collection’s division into eleven sections (or “Aisles”) is also a little odd since the sections are generically titled (“Jests and Jives,” “Willy-Nilly Sillies,” etc.), and all contain pretty much the same kind of humorous material. There are still quite a few pithy and amusing verses here, though, and Florian’s Learesque delight in wordplay and catastrophe (and Learesque drawings) can still bring poetic pleasure to even poetry-averse readers. The bound book will include an index of poem titles.