Sign in with Facebook
Drew's Reviews > milk and honey
milk and honey
by
by
This is total tumblr porn. Milk and Honey is pretty much a dream come true for emo fourteen-year-old girls who spend their spare time browsing deep, meaningful quotes written in pretty fonts like this one:
Also: I am going to argue that this is not poetry. Poetry is Robert Frost and Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. I know poetry covers a wide range of styles, and I'm not saying free verse isn't poetry. I've read some excellent books by Ellen Hopkins written in free verse, expressing the lives of troubled teens better than most authors could. The writing in this book is barely even free verse. It's a collection of short sentences, words really, broken into segments.
i could write
a sentence
in small-caps
and keep hitting enter
so it looks cool
but that does not make it poetry
It really concerns me that this is a New York Times bestseller. Is this what people think of poetry nowadays? Granted, Milk and Honey did tackle a lot of tough subjects like abuse, heartbreak, and self-healing, but the poor quality of writing distracted from the message.
Some of the verses were outright laughable:
And this one is just too good:
Did you really just call women's reproductive organs a "goddess"? I'm still cracking up.
Also, why is this book so against women shaving? It acts like men hate hairy women but do you really think the average man sits around thinking, "I would totally date her, but she has leg hair." And don't feed me that "beauty standards are oppressing women" lie. No one is forcing women to go to the store, buy a razor, and shave. I shave because I like my legs to feel smooth. If you feel like your body hair empowers you, go you. If you feel like smooth skin empowers you, go you. I don't want to hear about it either way.
The truly sad thing about Milk and Honey is the author actually made some good points. Take this verse about women putting other women down:
This is a serious issue that could have inspired a beautiful poem with a powerful message, but instead, the author wrote two lines that once again made me feel like I was browsing a teen girl's tumblr page. If you loved this book, cool beans. But I'd much rather read poetry where the writing doesn't retract from every point the author is trying to make.
Also: I am going to argue that this is not poetry. Poetry is Robert Frost and Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. I know poetry covers a wide range of styles, and I'm not saying free verse isn't poetry. I've read some excellent books by Ellen Hopkins written in free verse, expressing the lives of troubled teens better than most authors could. The writing in this book is barely even free verse. It's a collection of short sentences, words really, broken into segments.
i could write
a sentence
in small-caps
and keep hitting enter
so it looks cool
but that does not make it poetry
It really concerns me that this is a New York Times bestseller. Is this what people think of poetry nowadays? Granted, Milk and Honey did tackle a lot of tough subjects like abuse, heartbreak, and self-healing, but the poor quality of writing distracted from the message.
Some of the verses were outright laughable:
when i am sad
i don’t cry i pour
when i am happy
i don’t smile i glow
when i am angry
i don’t yell i burn
And this one is just too good:
the goddess between your legs
makes mouths water
Did you really just call women's reproductive organs a "goddess"? I'm still cracking up.
Also, why is this book so against women shaving? It acts like men hate hairy women but do you really think the average man sits around thinking, "I would totally date her, but she has leg hair." And don't feed me that "beauty standards are oppressing women" lie. No one is forcing women to go to the store, buy a razor, and shave. I shave because I like my legs to feel smooth. If you feel like your body hair empowers you, go you. If you feel like smooth skin empowers you, go you. I don't want to hear about it either way.
The truly sad thing about Milk and Honey is the author actually made some good points. Take this verse about women putting other women down:
other women’s bodies
are not our battleground
This is a serious issue that could have inspired a beautiful poem with a powerful message, but instead, the author wrote two lines that once again made me feel like I was browsing a teen girl's tumblr page. If you loved this book, cool beans. But I'd much rather read poetry where the writing doesn't retract from every point the author is trying to make.
Sign into Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ to see if any of your friends have read
milk and honey.
Sign In »
Reading Progress
June 26, 2017
–
Started Reading
June 26, 2017
– Shelved
June 26, 2017
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-12 of 12 (12 new)
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Jamison
(new)
-
rated it 3 stars
Jan 24, 2018 05:01AM
Nailed it.
reply
|
flag
See you have your point. But not everyone’s life circumstances are like yours. First I think we need not be very rigid regarding how an art is expressed if it can be well understood.
Second point is that I feel you really don’t understand what many people may go through just for the sake of so called societal beauty standard. I am not saying that these standards are universally followed. But they do exist, for example in my community. Women in my community have skin tones from fair to dark. The fairness creams has big market. So fairness is one beauty standard. Coming to body hairs, they are dark in colour . So high visibility. Now they are comparatively bit dense and hard. So you can’t think of using razor as that will make them grow thicker. Thus waxing is option. you will find people going for hand and leg waxing suffering through so much pain. Many times it results in blood coming out too. That too routinely every month. Getting eyebrows and upper lip hairs done is again too painful. But the worst part is everyone follows this as some kind of rule. On top of that people go for private area waxing which as the women hairs here are thick and bit dense is totally pain inflicting process. Also it’s not scientifically good as it can lead to many diseases. Still people don’t care of science and go for this. Purchase fairness creams for private areas. Why. Because many books says the female lead in novel has white private area which pink pearl. And now it is considered beauty standard. Girls are not confident enough to think that they have choice. They feel that it is the only right thing to do. They are not confident enough regarding their skin colour or body. And this is too unhealthy for a young mind. So this book resonates with miseries what women here go through.
Took the first two sentences right out of my mouth.
There's more to literature than the Classics. And guess what, THEY'RE GREAT
this cracked me up like no other, I think I might love you
Her work is not poetry. It is whatever it is and people can like it or not and whatever, I don't care about any of that but calling it poetry is so laughable. Free verse poetry also has themes and metaphors and particular cadence and assonance etc aka literary devices. This is sad emo Facebook updates masquerading as poetry and anybody who thinks it is poetry doesn't know poetry.
@Ashu: I think what you miss is that women mostly do this to themselves and NOT because "men make them do it". Most men are oblivious to all the beauty routines women routinely engage in. Also: whatever you choose to do in terms of grooming or self-care is your own business BUT... please know that the idea that "shaving or tweezing or cutting hair makes it grow back thicker" is NOT TRUE! just plain out and out, scientifically untrue. Ask a real dermatologist.
@Drew (reviewer here): yes yes yes what you say here. Bad Tumblr poetry. But the influence, you are likely too young to remember the 70s poet ROD MCKUEN. He was writing this kind of doggerel (vaguely Beat poetry) back 50+ years ago. He's forgotten today (and interestingly, died in 2015 just as Kaur rose to fame -- coincidence or reincarnation? LOL!). McKuen became a multi-millionaire from this, at a time when money was worth 10x less than today. So there is a huge audience for this kind of sentimental "rambling thoughts in lower case letters" type of poetry. That Kaur aims hers at disaffected millennial/GenZ women is no surprise, they are a HUGE market.
I had to add this... calling your female parts "goddess" is straight out of "50 Shades of Grey".
Yeah just because you don’t like instapoetry doesn’t make it invalid� This is so sad
This is exactly the review I was looking for, I was thinking all this but I couldn’t put it into words.
