Milk and Honey
Ratings427
Average rating3.4
I had head a lot about this book and how people raved about it. Honestly, it didn't live up to they hype for me. There were a few beautiful poems and verses and some that were touching, but I expected more. Not that it's bad by any means. A good read, some good pages, but nothing that will really stick with me. Regardless, you can tell there's passion in her writing and I will always love any book that promotes feminism and encourages women to be true and be strong.
I was really disappointed in this one. all the reviews kept saying how awesome it was and how it was a must read for poetry. I could not get into this one nor did I care for it.
I'm rating it two stars only because I found some quotes I could use.
But the question is: is this poetry? I mean, it looks like a bunch of random quotes put together with some drawings here and there 🤷🏻
Probably one of the most hyped books I've ever stepped on, and one of the most disappointing.
with respect to the author sufferings and personal story, I don't feel she shared anything with the reader. Milk & Honey tries to be so generic that anyone can relate to something in it.
very basic, shallow and vague. I don't know if it qualifies to be described as a book where half the pages are drawings.
Prima di tutto, non è una raccolta di poesie.
Sono frasi e testi scritti a caso che andrebbero bene come post pseudo intellettuali di Tumblr, Facebook ecc.
Forse lo avrei ritenuto “poesia” all'età di 15 anni ma non ne sono sicura.
Mi stupisco che un libro del genere possa essere stato sulla lista dei best seller di The New York Times.
Mehhh. I did like some poems, but it felt like the most poems were things you put in a tumblr post or something. Idk I just didn't connect with this one
The poems here are fragments, reading like scraps or notes, not fully formed poems. While the occasional line hits home, they're too often as simple as pop songs. I expect more from the poetry I read than this.
I don't think listening to the audiobook of a poetry collection was a good idea. This wasn't as good as I was hoping it was. I didn't connect to any of the poems at all.
“i am a museum full of artbut you had your eyes shut”
“do not look for healingat the feet of thosewho broke you”
“The thing about writing is I can't tell if it's healing or destroying.”
“your artis not about how many peoplelike your workyour artis aboutif your heart likes your workif your soul likes your workit's about how honestyou are with yourselfand youmust nevertrade honestyfor relatability”
Okay. This book is way too intense for a poetry book. At one point I thought I couldn't continue and had to stop. I mean, it literally gave me goosebumps after each stanza.
A friend of mine suggested me to read this and I was skeptical about it earlier since it's a different genre than my usual reads. I do enjoy poetry but this one was one of the most powerful work of modern poetry I've ever ever read. Rupi Kaur is raw and unabashed when it comes to expressing her thoughts.
The book deals with major and delicate themes like sexual abuse, love, trauma, loss, healing and feminism in a rather poetic and beautiful way.
Surely worth reading. I would now love to read ‘The Sun and the Flowers'
Wow
This is a small book with a huge impact. The writing is raw and real. Parts will stay with me.
I had this book on my mobile for a while now , and today i was in the mood for something short but beautiful so i decided to read this , and i am so glad i did .Mild and Honey , is a poetry book about love . loss . abuse . healing . moving on . femininity and other subjects that interests me as a girl .i thought the poems were so honest and beautifully written and i absolutely loved them . i don't know why i felt so warm reading this. it was really beautiful. I know i said ‘beautiful' a lot in this review , but that's what i'd describe this book . it's beautiful. In fact . it's not beautiful ... It's exquisite . I think every woman should read this . really recommended
You were 18 or 20 or 24 and you fell in love hard and maybe you had your heart broken hard and had some really bad sex with people. You found slam poetry on youtube and tumblr or instagram and feminism.
Read this :)
Il y a des livres qui accrochent votre regard sans que vous ne sachiez vraiment pourquoi, posés tranquillement sur un rayonnage. Je ne sais pas ce qui m'a attiré exactement vers Milk and Honey, mais lire deux poèmes m'ont suffit à l'acheter immédiatement. J'y ai retrouvé énormément de douceur, beaucoup de douleurs communes, de peines de coeurs partagées mais aussi d'espoir à l'état pur. Une poésie simple, directe, profondément humaine qui s'étale sans fausse pudeur à travers ces pages. Un moment magnifique.
“you were a dragon long beforehe came around and saidyou could flyyou will remain a dragonlong after he's left”
Definitely see the appeal for teens. Too repetitive and trite for me now, but 16 year old me would have liked it.
A few of the poems in this collection really resonated with me, but most of them were either too sexual, too preachy or too bitter (?) for my liking, to be honest. Still, I can't deny Rupi Kaur has a way with words.
Este poemario definitivamente es doloroso de leer, es difícil no sentir empatía por Rupi, ya que todos los sentimientos que expresa son muy muy humanos.
Rupi logra expresar belleza, amor, pasión y tristeza es un lenguaje simple y sencillo, que a la vez es desgarrador.
I am not a confident judge of poetry. While I can understand and appreciate Milk and Honey's themes, something about the verse kept throwing me off, the way the phrases broke and new sentences started without any differentiation from the previous ones and oh my goodness using all lowercase letters and no punctuation does not make you a good poet.I originally thought that this felt like a re-heated version of [b:The Princess Saves Herself in this One 30075802 The Princess Saves Herself in this One amanda lovelace https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1462211636s/30075802.jpg 50494177], but then realized that Princess came out after Milk and Honey, and the criticisms I'm seeing in reviews for both of them are very similar, which makes me wonder if I would have liked Milk more if I had read it first? (Probably not, my copyeditor heart was not on board when I had to re-read poems because the structure was too confusing to make sense of the first time around.) Or if my opinion of Princess is uneducated or not well-formed because of my lack of knowledge of good poetry? I still loved it. Still didn't like this one, though.
What can you say about this best selling poetry phenomenon? Maybe best that I don't try. I've worked at getting better at reviewing books but talking about poetry objectively is much harder and I lack the language for it still. This collection isn't for me, the older, married, hetero guy. While I don't feel an accusatory finger pointed at me, it's more an indifferent turning away. Nonetheless it's reassuringly straightforward in its language, almost blunt. Its use of lower case and clipped short sentences accompanied with simple line drawings are perfect for our internet age and ripe for the inevitable popularity backlash.
Sadly, I think this book was a waste of my money.
I did like the way the sections were divided up, and how they suggested the growth and healing and acceptance of the speaker after a trauma. I appreciated the #motherfuckinggirlpower and the empowerment the words provided. I felt like there is genuinely good advice in there about loving yourself and your body.
But since when did poetry become advice?? Half of the poems were aphoristic and vague, no better than what pops up on my instagram feed. Most of the poems didn't have titles, which made them feel even more like a Dove wrapper. For a speaker espousing growth and learning to take up space and to be assertive - the lines are short, small, and she uses “i” instead of “I” which makes her seem even more innocent and small. Furthermore, it's just not... exciting. It is not fresh. Sure, it is raw and exposed and minimalist which is what the author is going for but I've seen this achieved so much more tactfully (I quite enjoy a lot of @nayyirah.waheed)– there needs to be SOMETHING in there to hold on to.. some subversive use of language or line, some new metaphor, a delight in sound, SOMETHING. There's just nothing to unpack, nothing that refreshes my view of the world. Instead, it just seems like someone cracked open a damaged 21-year-old, and this spilled on the page. I guess that's what she was going for? It just feels immature.
The last section started to get there for me, but there was still no poem I finished thinking “Damn.” Which is how I evaluate a good poem. When it makes me realize something. Makes me pause. See the world just a little bit different. Makes me think “this person is so fucking good with words it almost hurts.” That never happened.
But I see why this book has gotten so popular. It is exactly BECAUSE there is nothing to unpack, BECAUSE the lines are so short, BECAUSE the language is so accessible and metaphors are so simple and sparse. So on the one hand, I'm like “cool, this gets people interested in poetry who wouldn't otherwise be!” but then I'm also like “but this is actually not very good poetry...“
So in conclusion I am conflicted about this book and its role in society and whether or not good poetry is forever dead to pop culture. Like the fact that this is a best-seller is actually upsetting to me. But maybe it's a bestseller because it has helped other women find a home in their body and heal their traumas and that is a beautiful thing. Does it make me a bad person then, to think this is truly shitty poetry? I have to think more about it.
The actual rating is 3.5 and I'll surely speak about it in the Booktube-a-thon week wrap-up