The poems in this section are like jagged glass: they could hurt if you held them wrong but held right, they become pretty handy weapons. The next part, “the breaking” is pretty self-explanatory. I don’t know if that was intentional but it made sense to me: after so much hurt, what does the rest of one’s life look like? A lot like this, I guess. The poems were in turn romantic and, well, not. This section was the most interesting one for me. She goes over how, because of her sexual abuse, she will never know the difference between making love and sex. The book also includes her thoughts on the behavior of people. Sometimes it is a burden, sometimes it is a reminder that no matter how loving someone is, hurt is hurt and it cannot be a part of love. Milk and Honey is a book of poetry about a young woman’s story of abuse and her journey of healing from this abuse. It takes the hurt from the last chapter and travels with it. The second part, “the loving” is a dizzying chapter. … or all the brutality of a hammer and nail: Depending on the context and topic being discussed, the combination of the two can have the delicate effect of a needle and thread … Kaur has a way with words and pictures (yes, the book is illustrated), expertly choosing the simplest words and lines to create the most powerful combination of poetry and art. The artwork with its minimalistic style reveals more about itself by the spaces it hasn’t illustrated, while the poetry– similarly minimal in writing style– fills in the blanks, making you unable to look away from the page. It is the shortest and the hardest section to read in my opinion as it deals with traumas like rape and the deep hurt caused by an absent father.

The book, as the image above hints at, is divided into four parts. There’s poetry that feels (to me) like it’s speaking an approximation of the language I am so fluent in, clear in writing and not in meaning, and then … there’s poetry like this: poetry that may as well be speaking every language you know, poetry that sinks into your skin like a salve, poetry like milk and honey. It took precisely two poems for Tumblr to convince me that Rupi Kaur’s milk and honey was a book I needed to read.

Books like milk and honey