Fiction Analysis: Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

Utterly beautiful and devastating. I don’t read much poetry anymore but Rupi Kaur gets my respect and admiration with the force behind Milk and Honey. I found moments from tears, I found myself rejoicing, I found myself at fault and I found myself the victim all within Milk and Honey. Reading Milk and Honey does take an awareness of a trend in poetry: The lack of capital letters for anything at all. It irked me for all of two seconds to shed my contempt at a lack capitalization, it charmed me entirely through dark and light.

Milk and Honey is the best book I’ve read so far this year. It is concise, it strikes deep and unrelenting. It is feminine. Rupi Kaur is bound to get endless praise for this work. There are also bound to be many who owe their lives, the existence of their own femininity, to Rupi Kaur. I, too, am thankful for having read this book.

how is it so easy for you
to be kind to people he asked

milk and honey dripped
from my lips as i answered

cause people have not
been kind to me

Milk and honey dripping from the teeth. Embodiments of sustenance and nourishment. They seethe from her very human lips but their existence within her are not because of a mutual kindness but due to wickedness brought upon here. This is the namesake of the book, though it is used again later, and captures much of what to expect from the rest of the book.

every time you
tell your daughter
you yell at her
out of love
you teach her to confuse
anger with kindness
which seems like a good idea
till she grows up to
trust men who hurt her
cause they look so much
like you

–to fathers with daughters

One day I will be a father. There is nothing as frightening to me as teaching my child that violence projected on them is normal. There was not violence of the sort in my life but I know of its existence in others’. This poem made me cry, not a lot, but I teared up certainly. I saw a daughter I didn’t even have yet. I raised her the best I could but I yelled, because when I get frustrated, I yell. I saw her on the path to a man who would hurt her and I saw it being my fault. It hurt so much, this unexpected vision.

your art
is not about how many people
like your work
your art
is about
if you your heart likes your work
if your soul likes your work
it’s about about how honest
you are with yourself
and you
must never
trade honesty
for relatablility

–to all you young poets

Let these be parting words of this review. Be honest to your art (even if it’s not poetry). Be honest to yourself. This may mostly be a message to myself, but my soul is happy with the work I’ve done so far. There is no money involved and no grand fame. Just my content soul and this keyboard.