Center for Teaching & Learning

“it is a blessing

to be the color of earth

do you know how often

flowers confuse me for home”

When I first picked up Rupi Kaur’s the sun and her flowers, I was skeptical about whether I would like it at all. The fact that it was a poetry collection and centered around Kaur’s experience with love made me think it might be boring and unrelatable. I wasn't interested in reading a book without a traditional plot and characters to follow through their hurdles and harrowing adventures.

But once I looked through the book, I realized how captivating Kaur’s poetry really is. Her short stanzas capture the devastation of her immigrant experience, the shame of being a woman, and the anger and loss in her love.  I found Kaur inspiring as a powerful woman and poet who could simultaneously express the vulnerability she has experienced.

The stanzas are short and cut to the bone, using only the most important feelings and ideas. This leaves the reader with a strong mental image without having to uncover it from unnecessary thoughts or actions. Kaur also rarely uses punctuation in the middle of her poems, which I found made the cadence and rhythm powerful, expressing the individuality of each line. Together with the carefully planned line breaks, this shows how strong Kaur’s formatting and structuring is, and makes the words sound like they are her direct thoughts she is allowing the reader to access.

Kaur perfectly balances defeat, loss, and pain, with a powerful sense of self-worth and love; I felt like I could relate to every poem. Her work encouraged me to divulge personal meanings and struggles from her writing. Kaur’s poems stood up for women in a realistic way, drawing upon her personal experiences to vividly describe real issues women face today. Even though they were sometimes hard to read, because of her honesty and realistic storytelling, I found her poems to be inspiring and empowering.

The sun and her flowers is separated into five parts: wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming. I thought it was strong to use a metaphor of the flower to describe herself. These separations helped give some shape to the collection that better described her love and the pain she felt. Each piece also has rough sketches around the poem. I felt like the drawing told its own story, and added more depth to her poetry. They were so powerful, even without the words- they seemed so personal to her and her story.

 All of Kaur’s poems are timely for our society today and promote power to immigrants, woman, and minorities. Her work shows the power Kaur found in her vulnerability, and how writing can help you find courage like it did for her.

Aelia

Andrews Mcmeel Publishing, 256 pages