Review: milk and honey by Rupi Kaur

Title: milk and honey

Author: Rupi Kaur

Release date: July 8th, 2016

Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing

Rating: 4/5 stars

Trigger warning for rape. If the subject of rape makes you uncomfortable, we would highly suggest you skip this particular poetry collection. Or find out which poems contain mentions of rape so you can skip those.

We’ve been on a huge poetry kick lately and because we’ve seen this book everywhere online for the last year, we decided to give it a go. See what all the hype is about, and if lives up to our expectations.

Summary:

This poetry collection is split into four sections: the hurting, the loving, the breaking and the healing. Feminisn, sexuality, love, heartbreak are all covered in under 200 pages. Rupi Kaur gets personal

Likes:

Lotte –

I really liked the way the book made me feel after I closed it. It left me feeling quite empowered, mainly the poems about feminism and the ones in the healing section very much resonated with me. The other thing I enjoyed in this book was the length of some of the poems. I liked how short some of the poems were, Rupi Kaur doesn’t need a lot of words to pack a punch with her poems. I really appreciated that.

Doreth – 

I liked the array of different topics that she depicted in such little words. I was really happy that most of the love poems were about family and not so much about romantic love. As I expected that to be the case when I started reading them. Also, I really like how the book feels.

Dislikes:

Lotte – 

There was one particular poem that I didn’t really like cause it went against some of the other poems in my opinion. The poem is on page 88 of the book and it starts like this: the woman who comes after me will always be a bootleg version of who i am. she will try and write poems for you to erase the ones i’ve left memorized on your lips but her lines could never punch you in the stomach the way mine did. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth, as it shows the kind of female competition I hate. Why is the next woman never going to be as good? I feel like it kind of goes against some of the more feminist poems in this collection

Doreth – 

I’m not the biggest fan of the shorter poems. When I first read the book, I loved it. But I couldn’t help but agree with some of the comments made about the shorter poems being a lot like something you would see on Tumblr. Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate some of the authors personality shining through in the form of stray thoughts, but I feel there was more effort put into the longer poems cause they felt more like actual short stories.

Favorite poems:

Doreth’s favourite                                                       Lotte’s favourite

Final thoughts:

Overall, we quite enjoyed (re)reading this poetry collection. We liked the illustrations that supported the poems, we felt like they added a lot. Both of us really appreciated the poems of feminist nature. We both found different aspects of the book to be enjoyable, and our opinions on poetry are quite contrasting so we feel like it would appeal to a wide audience.

Love,

Doreth & Lotte

We’re just getting to know the poetry genre, so we would love some recommendations. Leave your favourite poetry books below.

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