milk and honey by Rupi Kaur

f2 2 stars 

Rupi Kaur’s poetry collection was not what I expected. I’ve heard great things and raving reviews about it from two friends, but I just had a lot of issues with this collection.

Here’s the official summary before we dive into anything:


I think to start this review off, we need the definition of poetry.


I’m a very traditional person when it comes to literature. I use the serial comma, I like punctuating my poetry, and I stick to approximate novel word lengths.

Despite this, I can still accept rule breaking in literature. Emily Dickinson’s dramatic exclamation point and later on dash usage is one example, as J.K. Rowling’s last Harry Potter book was an ungodly number of words.

Unfortunately, I just couldn’t find the purpose of rule breaking in Kaur’s milk and honey. Poetry is supposed to be meaningful and moving, which Kaur does exceptionally, but it also needs to have some sort of literary skill in it. I think it’s a misnomer to call milk and honey a collection of poems because it is lacking some of this artful manipulation of the English language and the rhythmic qualities in the definition of poetry.

Poetry is not just writing from the heart. It’s really not. It’s more than just emotion on a page, but it doesn’t have to be pretentious. It can be simpler like Emily Dickinson while still using the English language expertly.

milk and honey could be called oddly broken up prose, but not poetry. It can be called poetically written lines, but still not poetry. I’m not trying to be cruel here and I know there are some scathing reviews of this online already.

The literary manipulation is just not present in milk and honey, and that’s why I don’t classify this as poetry.

Let’s look at an excerpt as an example and analyze it:

“i struggle so deeply
to understand
how someone can
pour their entire soul
blood and energy
into someone
without wanting
anything in

There is no rhyme or reason to this, no rhythmic qualities or underlying purpose of writing the poems this way. Kaur does a great job of bringing out emotions from the readers, using pathos to make them understand. This is the strongest point of milk and honey and one of the reasons why I think so many people like this collection. She writes about many important ideas of feminism and being a woman and heartbreak.

I read the whole novel as one really long run on sentence and just ignored all the breaks in the lines because I felt that they took away from the writing instead of added to it. Maybe if it wasn’t abused so much, I would have enjoyed this collection more, but unfortunately it was just not my cup of tea (and honey).

Nevertheless, milk and honey is poetic lines for the twenty-first century where our attention span is too short to watch anything that’s not a six-second Vine or read anything that’s not 140 characters or less and can be easily digested.

This can be seen all around YA literature as more and more authors are throwing plot twists and adding unnecessary action or steam to novels just to make sure the readers are engaged enough to finish the book.

Looking at the statistics, 50% of adults in the U.S. cannot read a book written at an eighth grade level and 45 million are functionally illiterate and read below a 5th grade level (Literary Project Foundation). This shows the changing dynamic of what people are reading and what they can read.

Despite it’s chopped up style made for easy digestion, Kaur’s work is great for preparing people who don’t like poetry to read poetry. It’s easy to read and can really make someone fall in love with emotive words. After you read milk and honey, try to read some of the more traditional poetry works, like Robert Frost’s works, and have your mind blown.

I think part of the hype surrounding milk and honey comes from how aesthetic it is with its line drawings and minimalistic style and the simplicity of the words. This is definitely what lures a lot of people in because of its pretty cover and drawings, but on a more literary standpoint, it does not make poetry.

As much emotion as I felt reading this, I can’t say I enjoyed it. I think Kaur works really well with emotions on a page, just not with the actual literary aspect of it. I just can’t get as into the poetic lines as other people when I’m trying to ignore the voice saying that this isn’t poetry or asking why this line is broken up. I think Kaur has a lot of potential, but this Tumblr style writing is just not my favorite thing to read.

There are still strong messages about feminism, relationships, family, and other serious topics which make this a novel choice suited for older teens & adults. Kaur shows the importance of these well, and I know this appeals to many people.

I unfortunately would not recommend milk and honey to someone looking to read poetry. I would recommend it for someone looking for an aesthetic collection of prose that can be interpreted at almost any reading level (though the subject matter is not for kids). You can get into poetry without having to cut it up with scissors to make it easier to read, you just have to find the poet you like reading and go from there.

compressed gif

Have you read milk and honey? What did you think? Feel free to leave your opinions below, but please be respectful! This is just my opinion 😊

12 thoughts on “milk and honey by Rupi Kaur

  1. Oh my goodness hi Vicky! I stumbled across your blog and 1. It’s so pretty 2. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE FELLOW CALLIGRAPHER/BOOKWORM 3. I found Rupi Kaur’s poetry kind of confusing? Like, I suck at analyzing poetry and sometimes I have no idea what she wants to express through her poems. The art turned out really weird too because I was reading on my Kindle.

    However, when I really understood what the poems were about, I loved them. So I don’t really know how to feel about this book? I ended up giving it 5 stars but to be honest, I only did that because I had no idea how to rate it.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. ahahha omg thank you!!!! and hi to you too, chloe!!

      I found the whole collection very stream of conscious-y and that made it all rambly and confusing but I think it was very provoking emotionally. I managed to interpret them (finally thanking my English teachers) but there was this nagging voice throughout saying “why isn’t this capitalized? where is the comma?” and more of my grammar Nazi tendencies 🙈

      ahaha and I totally get the whole not knowing how to rate things because sometimes I read books and have no idea what happened, but I still liked reading it even though I had no idea what happened which makes the whole thing confusing ahahah

      thank you for stopping by!! xoxo, Vicky

      Liked by 1 person

  2. I haven’t read it because I generally don’t understand poetry. 😭 So at least I wouldn’t be bothered by the non-metered patterns?!? Because I have NO CLUE AT ALL. 😂 But I can understand how frustrating it would be to someone who actually knows about the rules of poetry! It does seem like it’s about powerful things though, which is good. *nods*

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I definitely think you would like it if you’re not super picky about proper grammar, punctuation, and capitalization. Half of my issues weren’t even the poetry-ness, it was just me being frustrated with the lack of actual effort in basic writing skills??? ahahah but thank you for stopping by, Cait!

      Liked by 1 person

  3. you’re right about the entry into poetry part because i definitely want to read more poetry after reading milk and honey. i also agree with the part that it’s not really poetry, although several of the pieces are really good at getting emotions across which is probably where a lot of the merit of milk and honey comes in! but besides that, the form of the poem did nothing to the actual “poems” being written

    Liked by 1 person

    1. yeah, i mean maybe this is what modern poetry is but I’m so used to reading old fashioned poetry that every time i see something in this format, i do a little double take :S


  4. Totally agree, you have really summarised how I felt about milk and honey! I really just did not get the hype around it, it feels amateurish. I enjoyed parts of the collection because some poems are passionate and raw. I think Kaur does a lot of spoken word poetry and I feel like this might be better performed than read?

    Liked by 1 person

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