milk and honey

milk and honey by rupi kaur     204 pages

milk and honey is a collection of poetry and prose about survival. It is about the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. It is split into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose, deals with a different pain, heals a different heartache. milk and honey takes readers 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.

Though I'm sure this would be categorized under confessional poetry, to me a lot of it read like motivational poster captions or something inspirational someone would probably tattoo on their forearm.  Though I have read enough poetry to know that almost anything can be considered poetry, it doesn't mean I have to agree. I would consider Kaur's writing as more of a diary/memoir of her reflections on her life, particularly the most traumatic moments and how she was able to get past them. I can see how this work is inspirational to some, and Kaur definitely deserves to be called brave because she does not hide the fact that this is a work of deeply personal emotions and experiences. I just can't get past how simplistic most of it seems. But then, a lot of people might really need someone to tell them, "You matter," or "Love yourself first," and I don't mean that in a sarcastic way. This is definitely something I would give to someone I knew was going through a rough patch and really needs some advice on self-care. That being said, I did not enjoy the majority of this book. A handful of "poems" stuck out to me, but most of it seemed derivative of works or quotes I'd seen or heard before. I'm very picky when it comes to poetry and none of these poems really spoke to me or made my skin prickle or caused me to feel a rise of emotion. Perhaps I'm not the intended audience, I'm not sure. Either way, for me, this was mostly just an "eh" book and I probably won't read it again. If you got something out of it, great. I think Kaur is justified in sharing this piece of herself because there are lots of people out there who need to hear the things she's stated in this book.