A few years ago I read Lauren Haldeman’s Team Photograph. It was one of those books I liked, but was not really about it at the same time. What was it about? How did I feel about it? Did I really like it? The answers are, “I don’t know.” And oddly enough that’s what I think I did like about it. Everything that can make a book a book I do not like made me not really hate the book. I figured I’d read it again at some point, but in the meantime I would let it sit.
Then in April 2026, I decided to pick up other books by Haldeman. And found Instead of Dying (Colorado Prize for Poetry) and Calenday. Two books I seriously said, “Nope, can’t finish.” Not just because I knew it would take some time to finish and they were due back at the library in a few days with no renewals, I just knew while they seemed like they were good collections, I just could not get into it as they felt a bit abstract.
Calenday was realistic, I understood every word and they made sense. Except they did not. And forget about Instead of Dying. Two or three pages in I had not registered a single word. Both of these books are from 2014 and 2017 so it’s not like they were repeating modern themes I have read repeatedly. They just were artistic and a bit too “lofty” for my likes, interests and what I needed to be reading.
Some day I might pick them up again, but right now, they are not for me. I might also pick up Black Genealogy: Poems by Kiki Petrosino to see how Haldeman illustrated it, or The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood edited by Emily Pérez, but I promise nothing. However, I am considering Wild That We’re Alive: Momboy Comics as Team Photography was a graphic novel, so maybe I’m a reader of that kind of writing when it comes to them.
