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A review by realidadazul
Home Body by Rupi Kaur
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
2.75
I have read milk and honey, which at the time I rated 3.5 (pretty much because it did start the now popular instapoetry trend). I hoped to read a more mature Kaur, in the sense of her writing, since the themes she covers certainly are - and have been since her first book. However, I do feel like this is more of the same. Some poems are just one line long, some are not even 5 words long.
The best in this collection are those where she does not shy away from a longer format, or those where she plays with the form and makes paragraphs look interesting. She does use more poetic writing sometimes, which was a pleasant surprise whenever I encountered it, but it also made me wonder why shy away from it in certain poems; for example, in a particular poem she says “the mouth of my mother’s legs”, whereas in an erotic poem she uses “pussy”, which I felt killed the tone of that particular one (the word *pussy*, in particular, appears in another poem where I feel its use was imperative and adds strength to it).
Her poems about capitalism and her experience as an immigrant are her strongest. I do have to give her props as she does not say the same thing over multiple poems, which was one of my original criticisms of milk and honey.
The best in this collection are those where she does not shy away from a longer format, or those where she plays with the form and makes paragraphs look interesting. She does use more poetic writing sometimes, which was a pleasant surprise whenever I encountered it, but it also made me wonder why shy away from it in certain poems; for example, in a particular poem she says “the mouth of my mother’s legs”, whereas in an erotic poem she uses “pussy”, which I felt killed the tone of that particular one (the word *pussy*, in particular, appears in another poem where I feel its use was imperative and adds strength to it).
Her poems about capitalism and her experience as an immigrant are her strongest. I do have to give her props as she does not say the same thing over multiple poems, which was one of my original criticisms of milk and honey.
Content Warnings
Minor: Sexual assault