Milk and Honey

I'm very late to the Rupi Kaur fan club, but I am here to stay! Kaur's poetry is raw and fresh, and it yanked me into its world on the first page. Milk and Honey is broken into four sections of life and love, and the reader travels through heartbreak to loving to living. The first section, hurting, explains how love and pain aren't always separate, and how not knowing how to separate them is what causes skewed perspectives of love beginning in childhood. The unfiltered voice looks at how parents can shape us in the worst ways before we ever see the right ways. The poem that stayed with me is that alcoholic parents don't exist, only parents who couldn't stay sober long enough, and the truth hit me like a brick wall. It's a perspective that needs to be pushed more because it's the only true one. Favorite hurting poems: pages 34 and 39. The second section is called loving, and it shows the first step after hurting, where we find passion and fireworks in our first relationship and think we've found everything we've missed. However, it's usually the calm before the storm. The passionate love tends to involve fighting and fiery make-up sessions, and often, we mistake that for forever love when really it's just a better love than anything else we've been shown, but it's still not a good love. Favorite loving poems: pages 76-77. The third section, breaking, is about realizing you can feel both love for someone and betrayal and it's accepting that both are valid. It's forgiving yourself for having conflicting emotions because those who love us can hurt us. Breaking teaches you what real love is so you know how to recognize it from others and in yourself. Favorite breaking poems: pages 90, 95, 104, 106, and 125. The final section is called healing and it's about balance and boundaries, knowing how much of yourself to give to others only after first giving to yourself. Healing is realizing your worth as a person and taking up space. Healing is knowing you are whole because you exist. Favorite healing poems: pages 154, 159, 165, 178, and 185. The sections flow effortlessly and Kaur's writing is unrelenting and dives into you like a tidal wave. Her writing is unfiltered and a breath of fresh air. I can't wait to read her other collections.

This book is simple in form but powerful in emotion. Rupi Kaur writes in a way that feels deeply personal, and every poem touches on something real, love, pain, healing, and growth. It’s one of those books you can open to any page and find something that speaks to you. The short poems make it an easy read, but the meaning behind them stays with you. It’s the kind of book that feels like a quiet conversation with someone who understands. Tip: read a few pages at a time and take moments to reflect, it hits harder when you give each poem space to sink in.

Student review: Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur is a story about a girl and what she goes through as she grows up; Rupi has more bad than good happen in her life as she grew up. It's a fiction book and a lot of her story is about boys and what she goes through to try and find love. She goes through more pain than anything else. I hate reading but every night I actually got really excited to read this book. Milk and Honey is a very good coming of age story because as she grows up she learns what's real and what's fake. Like she used to think that she loved a guy but when she started dating a guy who she actually loved she realized that she didn't actually love the last guy because she saw how real love was really supposed to be. This book has a lot of very inappropriate text with a lot of rape and sex; It's a good book for high schoolers and adults but no younger because she does get raped at one point in the book. At first I thought that this book was really confusing because in the book Rupi Kaur doesn't use any names so you have to keep track of everyone without names. But there's only one or two people she writes about at a time so that makes it a lot easier. If I ever met the author I would have a lot of questions to ask. Like why didn't she have the main character tell anyone that she was being raped? Or why didn't she give any of the characters names? And a lot more. If you are the kind of person who really likes a good book but doesn't have the time for a long book, Milk and Honey is a really good quick read. If you're just going out for a long car ride and you have nothing to do, unless you're the one driving, then buy this book and read it. It only took me a day and a half to read and I wish there were A LOT more books like it. I think that this book should be a book assigned to classes to read instead of a book that most people don't want to read. I think that students would enjoy reading this book a lot more than others that I’ve read in the past. This is a very unique book because of the way it's set up. There are a lot of amazing quotes and there's no other book that I’ve read. There are quotes like, “love is not cruel, we are cruel, love is not a game, we made a game out of love”. This is a very beautiful and amazing book that I think you should read.

Love this book, would recommend it for anyone who needs to heal.

milk and honey by Rupi Kaur | I had seen this book all over Bookstagram and BookTube before I decided to pick it up. Poetry is not a genre that I read that much of, so I decided to give it a chance with a book that was liked by so many people. This collection of poems is split into four chapters, the hurting, the loving, the breaking and the healing: and each one of these deals with a different sort of ache and has its own purpose. I found truly fascinating how certain poems, even those that were only two verses long, could create such huge impacts and responses in me; not all of them obviously, but most of them. Some of the poems in this collection capture the sweetness in those bitter moments, and the bitterness in those that are sweet; creating a wonderful dissonance in the feelings that those verses will arise in you. This collection is a journey of loss, love, abuse, trauma, healing and femininity through Kaur’s eyes and thoughts.

Was ist gute Poesie? Muss sie sich reimen? Muss sie rhythmisch sein? Muss sie überhaupt etwas müssen? Wenn Rupi Kaurs Kritiker sagen, „wahre Dichter“ würden sich im Grabe umdrehen, sollten sie vielleicht mal an den Grabstein von Herrn William Wordsworth klopfen, der sagte: Die Poesie hat ihren Ursprung in einem Gefühl, dessen man sich in Ruhe erinnert. Das hat Kaur getan. Ob dieses Gefühl nun beim Leser ankommt oder nicht, liegt vielleicht auch an ihnen, an mir, an dir. my heart woke me crying last night how can i help i begged my heart said write the book milk and honey ist definitiv keine klassische, romantische Lyrik, es sind keine Sonette, es gibt keine Reime. Sie ist von schlichter Sprache, fast schon elementar. Gleichzeitig ist sie stark, eindringlich, eindrucksvoll. Die Gedichte sind meist kurz, Interpunktion ist nicht vorhanden. Die Zeilentrennung mag manch einem seltsam erscheinen, trägt meiner Meinung nach jedoch erheblich zum Fluss des Textes bei. Auf vielen Seiten finden sich ebenfalls Zeichnungen der Dichterin. milk and honey takes the reader through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look Mit wenigen Worten und Zeilen schreibt die 23-Jährige über Liebe, Schmerz, Verlust, Hoffnung, Trauma, Sex, Missbrauch, Weiblichkeit. Es sind eigene Erfahrungen und solche von Frauen, die sie kennengelernt hat. Kaurs Schreibstil funktioniert wie ein Sog,wie ein Strudel, der seinen Leser völlig verschlingt und am Ende des Buches mit unzähligen Emotionen wieder ausspuckt. our knees pried open by cousins and uncles and men our bodies touched by all the wrong people that even in a bed full of safety we are afraid Kaur hat ergreifende Gedichte geschrieben, wütende, hoffnungsvolle; Gedichte, in welchen sie die Stärken der Frauen anpreist; Gedichte, welche uns helfen, uns selbst zu lieben. Es ist ein Muss für all Diejenigen, die Freude an moderner, freier Poesie haben. Aber vor allen Dingen ist es ein Muss für junge Frauen, für Mädchen; es ist ein Ratgeber, ein Spiegel, eine Inspiration. You tell me to quiet down cause my opinions make me less beautiful but i was not made with a fire in my belly so i could be put out i was not made with a lightness on my tongue so i could be easy to swallow i was made heavy half blade and half silk difficult to forget and not easy for the mind to follow Ich habe wirklich versucht, mir diese knapp 200 Seiten aufzusparen, aber ich konnte einfach nicht anders: ich habe es inhaliert. Natürlich ist nicht jedes einzelne Gedicht bahnbrechend gut, aber fast jedes traf eine andere Stelle in meinem Herzen und in meiner Seele. Mein Buch ist voll mit orangefarbenen Post-Its, die meine neuen Lieblingsgedichte markieren. Es sind mindestens zehn. Selten hat mich Lyrik so zum Lächeln gebracht wie Kaurs, sie zeigt uns, dass das Leben, egal wie schrecklich es sein mag, doch eine unglaubliche Schönheit und Kraft besitzt. The world gives you so much pain and here you are making gold out of it Kaurs eigenwillige, moderne Poesie über Schmerz, Trauer, Liebe und Hoffnung hat mich völlig in ihren Bann gezogen. Sie hat vielleicht nicht das Rad neu erfunden, ist keine neue Sylvia Plath, aber sie hat sich mit milk and honey als junge talentierte Stimme am Lyrikhimmel etabliert. Müsste ich fünf Werke empfehlen, die jede junge Frau gelesen haben sollte, wäre dieses hier dabei. Dürfte ich nur eines nennen, vielleicht auch. Für mich gehört milk and honey in jedes Bücherregal, auf jeden Nachttisch, in jede Handtasche. Wer sich ein genaueres Bild von Rupi Kaurs Gedichten machen möchte, findet auf ihrem Instagram-Account ziemlich viele aus ihrem aktuellen Buch. Ich kann allerdings nur empfehlen, es dann doch noch zu kaufen, da einmal lesen wahrscheinlich nicht genug sein wird.

The poem is so beautifully written and illustrated. The lines are so visceral and provocative. It makes you feel things like it should. It is a must read and needs to be widely read. And the poetic structure goes against the hegemony of poetry which I appreciate in literature.

Great book!

‘the very thought of you has my legs spread apart like an easel with a canvas begging for art’ When a female friend of mine shared this poem with me, I winced. Receiving stuff of sensual nature is by itself something that I am not quite comfortable with, but here is this poem, sent to me by a female friend. What both aggravated and doused my uncomfortable feeling was my getting to know that the author of this poem was a woman herself. Reading through the lines again I understood that her words exude not just eroticism but a sense of deep esotericism as well. Her words emanate from the longing, a deep pain, searing loneliness and flowing love – all things that I myself can relate with and connect soulfully too. Immediately I ordered for the book online. From the moment I received the book in my hand and opened it, to the moment I closed it this morning, it was one hell of a ride through the dark corners of my heart. Dealing with lust, longing, love, pain of betrayal, self-love, letting go, hurt, healing, feminism and acceptance, this is a book that every introvert, every aching heart and every one that still believes in that quaint concept called ‘love’ must read. Her words are the magical runes that any heart capable of love would respond to. They touch the raw nerves of our inner-selves, bringing to light all those unhealed wounds of the heart that we have learnt to live with, stir up all those dark passions that we keep buried deep beneath the hypocritical facades of politeness and public perceptions about ourselves. With her, you don’t get to feel the servile yearnings of a Kamala Das or the aggression of a Taslima Nasrin shelling out satires about the grapes gone sour. Here is a woman who feels love and writes about it, as deeply and as passionately as a Pablo Neruda or as a Kahlil Gibran also can. She loves, she yearns, she crumbles, she weeps about the loss, but she also picks up her pieces and puts them back together, but this time only more firmly. Here is a real feminist that doesn’t talk about her body and her desires with a feigned sense of supremacy or acrimonious misandry. There is no vulgarity when she writes about her lust. You feel no revulsion when she talks about the inner functions of female body. She doesn’t preach promiscuity in the name of freedom. She takes pride in what she is. She doesn’t accede to the preset conventions of feminine beauty. She doesn’t pay obeisance to patriarchy. Here is a poetess we can all fall in love with, not just for her words, but for all that she is – her fears, her pains, her strengths, her weaknesses, her courage, for her being the person that she is. Each poem here is a colorful thread, seeing which you will be able to perceive a beautiful tapestry - that is her adorable personality! This is a book that will leave you craving for more – like a perfect session of passionate love-making!