Lauren Halendeman's poetry book, Calendays was an exposure to a kind of poetry I have never seen before. Haldeman’s style is experimental in form, technique, and content. Although Calendays contains many poems of various topics, the poems I enjoyed the most were those about pregnancy and motherhood. Children and their development are also of my favorite topics to write about. Haldeman unmistakably wrote from experience. The simplicity yet insightfulness with which she describes the speakers experiences with child-rearing is mind-blowing, for example, "Motherhood is zoology", and "If a baby turns a year, what does the parent turn?". It is almost as if the more simple her prose are, the more depth they have. I would love to acquire this skill, especially because I most enjoy writing narrative poems which always poses the challenge of "showing not telling" which Haldeman does so well. Although the other poems were pleasant, I went through the whole book anticipating the depth of those poems. After finishing the book, I wished I could have extracted all of the motherhood poems and put them in their own book. Reading the rest of the poems, I expected them to be anecdotes about the speakers child and their lives. Perhaps I did not completely comprehend the other poems but they did not seem to be related to the storyline of the mother and child. This confusion was compounded by the fact that the titles of most poems seemed to be dates, although when I tried to imagine the dates indicating when the events of the poem occurred, the book did not seem to be a cohesive story.
What immediately caught my eye was her almost obsessive use of enjambment. Sometimes the enjambment was obviously purposeful. For example, the poem 10/29 reads,
“This is the birth house:
we wait for your landing. Here is a
mirror reflecting dogs the same dogs”
Not only does the text create anticipation, it is actually about anticipation. So, the reader expects the first two lines to follow with the birth of a child, or at least another significant development. Instead, the contrast is controlled by the line, “mirror reflecting dogs the same dogs” which is purposefully anticlimactic. Other times however, I was confused by the meaning of the enjambment. I have yet to understand the purpose of,
“at night the entire bed grunts with your
hooves and maw warmth”.
I do not see how making that all one line would have changed the meaning. I wonder if Haldeman used enjambment so much of only for its dramatic effect? Lines like these often confused me and did not allow me to enjoy the rest of the poem. As a poet I am very reluctant to use enjambment unless it absolutely creates an effect that cannot be achieved another way. Although I understand its potential, I would rather not take the risk of confusing a reader, even at the expense of some fancy footwork. Haldeman's experimentation however, did encourage me to take more risks as a poet, especially with enjambment and other line break techniques.
I appreciated the brilliance in how Haldeman was able to capture such precious moments with concrete words. She successfully turned intangible moments into accessible experiences. My favorite lines of the book are the ones that capture profound ideas about birth and life. The most thought provoking line in the book was hands down the opening line in the poem 10/29, “We don’t get older, we just get more detailed”. This line contains the philosophy and perspective of sages. Instead of giving aging its assumed negative connotation, Haldeman made it into a building process of quality. The more I think about it, the more I realize how true it is that as we go through life we collect experiences until the road map of our lives is essentially the same, just a lot more marked up. As a poet, I aspire to write about the delicate balance of philosophizing life’s great questions in as few words as possible, without sounding trite. Similarly, the poem 03/09 reads, “Hello visitor, entering this oxygen filled lake”. What a wonderful way to use the Earth’s physical properties to describe its spiritual reality. Calling a baby "the smaller human" opens up more doors of meaning rather than just writing "baby. These small but unique insights give Haldeman's poems her trademark stamp.
Haldeman’s experimentation with form was also surprising. The poem "Istvan" showcased a technique I was very surprised to see: almost the entire poem was in parenthesis. Her poem "Seventeen Powers of Visitation" is list of single sentences. The poem 06/17 is just one five line stanza! While some of these techniques were worth their weight in creativity, their unconventionality was distracting at times. Perhaps I have just not read enough poetry to appreciate them.
Lauren Haldeman is definitely a unique artist with hopefully more to work to follow. On one hand, Haldeman’s experimentation with creative forms is a little too out of the box for my voice as a writer. However, as a writer, I appreciate the delicate yet blunt way she captures the tenderest moments of life, and hope to emulate that.
