rupi kaur’s poetry.

I fought it for as long as I could. I didn’t want to read these books because (shocker) I usually don’t enjoy reading something when it’s so trendy and everyone else is reading it – it takes the intimacy between the book and me away. Also, because in social media people have been posting so many of her poems that I thought that maybe I had read the whole book by then.
But then l found a little bookstore that had a “buy one get one free” deal, so I bought one book and got the other one for free (why not?). Funny how the vice of buying books works. But… Why buy it? Why own it? Why read it? I won’t lie, I bought it out of curiosity once people went back to reading other things. Also, because this kind of poetry seems to be a new, innovative writing style. I’ve finished the first one and still making it through the second one.

“milk and honey” depicts kaur as an untamed woman. She’s an open book (literally and figuratively) but remains mysterious, almost untouchable even when you’re reading pieces of her life through the pages. More than feelings, this book transmits stories. Some are short and abstract, and some are told in great detail, but they are all relatable even when we haven’t lived through the same experiences or feelings. And that’s the beauty of this book – it is simple in that it is full of emotion and accessible. But the writing style isn’t simple at all. I had trouble understanding the significance of kaur’s style in ignoring some grammar, syntax, and punctuation rules and at times I found it distracting (some call it being a “grammar Nazi”). But as I began to navigate through kaur’s poetry, I understood it as part of the themes of her poems; liberation, feminism, being a rebel, embracing your wounds, your mistakes, your flaws, growing, and changing. So her writing style, although hard to grasp, may seem innocent and naïve, but it is neither – it’s another layer of kaur’s uniqueness and journey. Visceral words, carnal descriptions, deep emotions, ugly truths, playful ironies, enigmatic reflections… exotic like fruit. And amazing illustrations.

Manos literarias 10/07/2019