milk and honey

Taking a quick break from studying for finals to write this blog post about a fantastic poetry collection I read last night: rupi kaur's milk and honey. A touching, wonderful compilation of poems and sketches about love, abuse, loss, femininity, womanhood and family. Divided into four sections ("the hurting" "the loving" "the breaking" "the healing"), the reader goes through kaur's relationships and healing with her. On her blog, kaur writes that the collection "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." One of my favorite poems:

i want to apologize to all the women
i have called pretty
before i’ve called them intelligent or brave
i am sorry i made it sound as though
something as simple as what you’re born with
is the most you have to be proud of when your spirit has crushed mountains
from now on i will say things like, you are resilient
or, you are extraordinary
not because i don’t think you’re pretty
but because you are so much more than that

Some of the poems were just a few words, others were more stream-of-consciousness. If you don't end up reading milk and honey, I encourage you to follow her on instagram, where she posts her poems occasionally (see an example after the break). In an interview with Huffington post, she says that she hopes readers will get out of her poetry "Comfort and peace. I want it to be something they always refer back to. Something they read when they need a hug or some understanding and no one is around to understand them. Something they can carry around with them. I want the book to be what I needed around me when I was growing up." Thanks to my roommate for bringing this book back with her from her visit home this weekend. Ok, now I should go back to studying. Rating: ★★★★★

A photo posted by rupi kaur (@rupikaur_) on Mar 7, 2016 at 3:48pm PST