I remember when my first roommate in college (before I transferred) displayed milk and honey on her desk as decoration. Although she and I were incompatible, it still pops up in my mind from time to time 3 ½ years later. And knowing that Rupi Kaur has a lot of clout, I decided to look up her book for myself. I was surprised to see that a few of the top-voted Goodreads reviews rated it 1-2 stars, saying that they found milk and honey to be overrated. But I read a sample of it on Amazon and really liked what I read. So, as the sticker on the featured image gives away, I checked it out from UNC’s Davis Library.
It’s through this book that I learned about Instapoetry, a genre of which Kaur is a pioneer. I had never heard of it before, and it has generated a lot of critiques. I think they’re valid ones, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing that poetry has become more accessible via Instagram. It’s predictable that such would happen given the impact social media has. Also, poetry has been perceived as a very archaic art, which is the fault of White normativity because of how White poets are ALWAYS upheld as the standard.
There’s definitely a place for poets like Kaur, because poetry should not be confined to a rigid style, method, or perspective. That said, I have my own critiques about milk and honey that I’m about to share in a little bit. My review starts right after the book’s synopsis.
Synopsis: milk and honey is a poetry collection that details how familial and relationship traumas have impacted her psyche and worldviews. There are four chapters: “the hurting,” “the loving,” “the breaking,” and “the healing.” “the hurting” talks about the impact of adverse childhood experiences and how the patriarchy poisons family units. “the loving” delves into the dynamics of a tumultuous romantic relationship Kaur once had. “the breaking” is where she grieves the end of that relationship and the good/bad/ugly of it. “the healing” is where she prioritizes independence, self-love, and empowerment during the recovery process. The title commemorates Sikh widows and their resilience as survivors of the 1984 Sikh genocide in India.
milk and honey also happens to be one of the most frequently banned books in the United States. PEN America, an organization that protests oppressive book bans, reported that milk and honey was banned in 10 school districts during the first half of the 2022-23 school year, the same number as Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Juno Dawson’s This Book Is Gay.
As always, here’s a content warning before diving into the chapters. Read this review for as long as you feel comfortable. No bans or policing here.
CW: Mentions of sexual violence (including incest), domestic violence, emotional abuse/neglect, sanism, misogyny. A few spoilers also exist. Read at your own risk.
the hurting
“if I knew what
safety looked like
i would have spent less time falling into
arms that were not”
-pg. 21
The sneak peek on Amazon includes part of this chapter. In the 2nd poem, it’s quite unclear who the “first boy to kiss her” was. Although, “the hurting” predominantly focuses on the sexual violence from Kaur’s father. It’s a hard-hitting chapter on how misogyny and the patriarchy poison family structures, including her father’s history of abusing her and her mother.
Her father’s abuse also impacts her relationship with her mother, and internalized misogyny ensues. Kaur feels that she should remain silent, that she’s “nothing,” that she’s supposed to take her father’s tantrums unabated, and that she has no bodily autonomy—all beliefs stemming from the patriarchy’s violence against women.
Recently I went to this event about love, and there was a question asked to attendees about whether they agreed or disagreed about family trauma influencing romantic relationships. One person said that trauma doesn’t have to impact those relationships, and yeah, they don’t. Even so, I found their answer to be quite sanist, because the way they said it made it seem as if people can simply just “get over it.” When the reality is that it takes time to move forward from adverse childhood experiences, especially those involving sexual violence. As Kaur writes on page 14,
“it is your blood
in my veins
tell me how i’m
supposed to forget.”
Abuse from one family member can cause discord with other family members. And it wasn’t just her father who committed sexual violence against her. There’s also a poem where she refers to being a child in therapy and pointing to a doll’s parts to say where her uncles touched her. And here’s another hard-hitting poem about her father.
“he was supposed to be
the first male love of your life
you still search for him
everywhere”
-father (pg. 16)
“the hurting” shows how childhood experiences can shape the romantic relationships people get into, which, oftentimes, happens unintentionally. That dynamic is showcased further in the next chapter, “the loving.”
the loving
“your name is
the strongest
positive and negative
connotation in any language
it either lights me up or
leaves me aching for days”
-pg. 67
The first 2 poems make a deep point on how childbirth is seen as a beautiful event, yet unrequited love for the child can ensue after birth. There’s a flashback to when Kaur’s mother was pregnant with one of her siblings at four years old. Her father told her, “the closest thing to god on this earth / is a woman’s body it’s where life comes from.” She’s already highlighted her father’s abusive behaviors, so the lines about pouring one’s “entire soul / blood and energy / into someone / without wanting / anything in / return” hits hard.
That backdrop about her childhood is a VERY captivating prelude to the unrequited love she would experience from her boyfriend. Kaur’s poems show her in the state of limerence—she loves the sound of his voice, the way he smells, and the ways he touches her. Just the thought of him gets her aroused, and the reference to sex is clear with her legs being open “like an easel with a canvas / begging for art.”
Even so, she has some self-awareness outside of limerence. She wants to be self-confident and not depend on a man for confidence. She acknowledges her feelings and what she seeks in a partner. However, there are warning signs of her boyfriend that she overlooks. The first one is that he warns her about not being “an easy person to want.” The second one is that he’s not pleased about Kaur being a writer, shown by his clenched mouth and icy stare. The third one? He tells her that she “talks too much.”
I bring the warning signs up to say that limerence can cause someone to overlook potential red flags. There may be a few people who don’t find those actions to be red flags, but hmm. How would you feel if your partner told you “you talk too much,” yet they can’t help but kiss your mouth during sex?
The last part of “the loving” further details this dysfunctional relationship. The lack of i love yous, fights over menial matters, loud arguments that disturb the neighbors—limerence is over. And the make-up sex that happens after their arguments is concerning. Obviously. Because from there comes the traumatic breakup, which “the breaking” chapter details.
the breaking
“love is not cruel
we are cruel
love is not a game
we have made a game
out of love”
-pg. 127
“the breaking” sees Kaur reel over the breakup and all the times her ex failed to live up to his words. She goes through the stage of denial, thinking that he’ll be back even though she knows he won’t. Along the way, she reminisces over the sound of his voice, his looks, and the belief that they’d be together forever, despite the incidences of domestic violence and emotional abuse.
She says that a man is not worth it if he can’t respect women, yet also goes as far as to say that other women will not excite him nor have the qualities she has (i.e., that of a poet and a lover). The degrading of his future girlfriends is internalized misogyny in action, and the two messages are contradictory. Although, it can happen when trying to process a breakup. All the efforts of trying to forget and move on from her ex—one can feel empathy for her with how she details her emotions, actions, and thought processes.
This chapter is the strongest one because of the powerful pathos it contains. The poems tug at themes of betrayal, grief, and the questioning of self-worth. I’ve never gone through a breakup, but I know that grief can occur when distancing from one or multiple people. I myself have questioned my self worth after distancing myself from different environments.
And there are points made about how people are wishy-washy and prey on vulnerability. One day a person wants you. The next day they don’t. This is what Kaur went through with her ex—he’d treat her badly and give her the silent treatment, but then acted like nothing happened and would say “i love you.” The honey symbolization is a wonderful metaphor of that dynamic: it describes how he’d use her for his own selfish pleasure and then leave when it wasn’t fulfilled. He sought lust, sweetness, and desire in the relationship without respecting Kaur’s boundaries or preferences. How could he expect honey to come from her when he couldn’t respect her?
The “to-do” list Kaur mentions at the end is something Imma have to remember, especially about planning a trip and a project. Although the mint chocolate chip ice cream? Not a flavor I would go for, but I trust her senses there.
the healing
“our backs
tell stories
no books have
the spine to
carry”
-women of color (pg. 171)
“the healing” is where she moves past the break-up and emphasizes self-love during recovery. There are poems about women’s empowerment, self-empowerment, body neutrality, gratitude, kindness, and spirituality. “Body neutrality” means embracing your body for its natural functions rather than its appearance, and Kaur encourages seeing menstruation and pubic hair through that lens.
I have a few critiques on this chapter, but I’ll start off by saying this: The topics are great. I particularly found it cool that she wrote about her Punjabi Sikh identity and what the surname “Kaur” means to her. She brings up the principle of seva, a core one in Sikhi that emphasizes selfless service. I also like the emphasis on not relying on relationships to feel whole and that even while being in one, self-happiness is key. This poem from page 162 really struck an arrow to my heart, because the sentiment is true:
“there is a difference between
someone telling you
they love you and
them actually
loving you”
However, my overarching critique is that “the healing” is the weakest chapter in this book for several reasons. One, I realized that some of the poems throughout the chapters needed more punctuation. It was hard to follow Kaur’s train-of-thought at times due to the lack of periods. It’s also worth noting that she writes in all lowercase letters and exclusively uses periods as a nod to the Gurmukhi script in Punjabi, her native language. It only uses periods and has no letter case distinction. Even so, more periods would’ve made the poems easier to follow.
Another reason “the healing” is the weakest chapter in milk and honey is because it’s where I noticed flaws in her free verse structure. Particularly concerning the cadence of her poems. Continuously pressing the “return” key as a stylistic technique doesn’t make for a harmonious poem. There has to be consideration for how those “returns” affect the poem’s cadence (i.e., meters, tones, moods).
It appears that Kaur did not proactively consider that. At least not the meter of the lines. Even though free verse poetry sounds easy to write due to having no concrete rules, one must keep in mind how meter, word choice, assonance, and other poetic devices affect cadence and delivery. If I were an editor of her poems, here are some corrections I would make, for example, on this poem from page 170.
original
revised
It’s funny, because I am not a poet. I barely read poetry (although I reviewed an Amanda Gorman poetry collection 2 years ago), and I’ve never taken a full poetry class or workshop. Though for some reason, my sixth sense could detect areas for improvement. Another one concerns the usage of conjunctions in poetry. I’ve noticed that placing conjunctions at the ends of lines ruins cadence within poems, while placing them at the beginning of lines maintains it.
Her writing style consists of enjambment, which occurs when sentences are multiple lines long in a poem. While conducting further research, I saw this article from Oregon State University that says that poets use enjambment “to speed up the pace of the poem or to create a sense of urgency, tension, or rising emotion as the reader is pulled from one line to the next.” Previously I was thinking that the enjambments represented pauses, so I’ve learned of a different way to read Kaur’s poems. However, I still stand by my above critiques. Enjambments have to be used in ways that enhance the delivery of the poem, or otherwise they jam up the cohesion of it. When using them in free verse poetry, hinting when to pause or keep reading could be efficiently accomplished through separated stanzas and periods.
About the overall chapter, the poems are fragmented with the rest of the book. Again, the topics were great. But “the healing” could’ve had greater connectedness with the other three chapters. I realized that with the poem on page 192, where the line “for you to see beauty here / does not mean / there is beauty in me” left me thinking, okay? What does that even mean? That part sounded weird to me. Then again, there are several poems throughout the book where the POV was confusing, particularly with the signatures indicating different POVs and emotions. I like the quirkiness of the signatures, but they are hard to grasp at times.
And while on the subject of connectedness, I notice that honey takes on different symbolisms, while milk does not. The poem on pg. 199 sees Kaur write “I need to be successful to gain / enough milk and honey / to help those around / me succeed.” I like the message of staying grounded and giving back, but really, what does milk symbolize in this book? As mentioned in the synopsis, milk and honey primarily commemorate Sikh women resilience. But the multiple symbolisms of honey could’ve been balanced out by multiple symbolisms of milk. The poems should’ve included them, because that would’ve increased the connection between the title and overall poetry collection.
final verdict
“you cannot leave
and have me too
i cannot exist in
two places at once”
-when you ask if we can still be friends (pg. 136)
The above poem alone single-handedly got me to finally understand the idiom “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Because doesn’t having your cake mean eating it? It’s verbal irony, but in Kaur’s case, it’s clear what her version of that phrase means. It’s that her boyfriend can’t leave at his own convenience and expect her to go along with it. As she shouldn’t. That cycle of gaslighting is not something to condone.
Speaking of which, the best poem in the book is the one about not making a vacation out of expectations. It’s in “the healing” chapter, and the cadence, structure, imagery—5/5 from me. It reminds me of Kaur’s potential as a poet and how far her talent can stretch if she’s more mindful about her execution of poetic devices. It’s not that she has to write super complicated poetry—of course not. One of her hallmarks is that her poetry is accessible and not full of overly complicated language. That said, accessible poetry can still incorporate some advanced language in creative, clever ways to provoke critical thinking.
Kaur could advance her poetry talent the fastest outside the social media gaze. Nevertheless, milk and honey is a compelling, emotive poetry collection that gets raw about how trauma impacts relationships with the self and others. I really respect how she writes poetry not just for poetry’s sake, but also for storytelling’s sake. The progression of poems concocted a storyline, the doodles were cute, and the imagery kept me intrigued. The analogy of having to painfully sew oneself up after opening up to others is one that I’ll recall when thinking about grieving relationships.
Due to the simplicity of milk and honey, I’m getting the English and Spanish versions to supplement my Spanish learning journey. Poetry translates differently between languages, but Kaur’s poems are simplistic enough for me to understand them in both languages. I know this because I’ve already read a sample of its Spanish version, otras maneras de usar la boca (translation: other ways to use your mouth). Those two books will go onto my personal bookshelf, and I shall do the same with her other books as well.
Overall Rating: 3.75/5
