Milk and Honey Review

 Hello! It's been a while, but I've been in school. Lots of reading, but not much time for reviewing. For one of my classes I had to read Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur. I read this book in high school when it was published, but I hadn't picked it up since. 

I loved this book when I read it the first time. I thought it was so emotional and powerful. But I realize now, after reading it as an adult, some six or seven years later, that it is far more emotional and powerful than I originally thought. 

The poems touch on a lot of different things, with most of the focus being on some aspect of a relationship or sex. Some of that can be hard to read, especially if you have had a traumatizing experience with either of those things. For me, I found some of the things she wrote hard to read, the words she uses hitting me particularly hard. There is one poem where she compares a part of a sexual interaction with the scraping of the inside of a cantaloupe. The words create an image that is hard to ignore and makes the things that her personas are feeling that much more relatable. 

I wrote an essay on the way that bodies are described throughout Milk and Honey. I thought it was interesting to note the different ways Kaur incorporates bodies into her poems. One of the most noticeable ways that I saw was how Kaur's personas use their bodies as an extension of their feelings. Oftentimes the people in the poems aren't able to express themselves in a healthy way and use their bodies to release what is muddled inside their heads. In Kaur's poetry, oftentimes this ends up being through sexual interactions. I think this makes the poetry more relatable for the reader because a lot of people have trouble expressing themselves in a healthy manner, and even if they do, it's very hard. Sometimes people find it easier to just let loose through their body instead of coming to terms with their emotions. For me, this seems to be a prominent theme throughout Kaur's poems. 

Another thing I like about the book is the informality of it all. There is some structure, but not a whole lot. A lot of the poems don't have titles. There are just some words, that don't follow a proper grammar structure on the page, however Kaur decided she wanted them to land. Another thing is that she drew all the pictures in the book. All the scribbled images under the poetry were hand drawn by the author, which I personally think adds a personal touch. We as the reader, get to see how she imagines the poetry, almost like getting to see into her mind.

Milk and Honey is about two hundred pages, but because the poems are short, for the most part. I read it in one day, but if you want to really think about the things she says, you might want to read it slower. I think some of the content may warrant taking some breaks through the reading. But I do think people should read it. Due to her instagram/social media fame, Kaur's poetry seems to have become a bit cliche, but the things she's writing about are important and very real experiences for a lot of people. 

This book is available wherever you get your books. As well, you can find a lot of examples of Kaur's poetry online and on social media. 

Read and Enjoy!!