Milk and Honey

Sadly, I think this book was a waste of my money.

I did like the way the sections were divided up, and how they suggested the growth and healing and acceptance of the speaker after a trauma. I appreciated the #motherfuckinggirlpower and the empowerment the words provided. I felt like there is genuinely good advice in there about loving yourself and your body.

But since when did poetry become advice?? Half of the poems were aphoristic and vague, no better than what pops up on my instagram feed. Most of the poems didn't have titles, which made them feel even more like a Dove wrapper. For a speaker espousing growth and learning to take up space and to be assertive - the lines are short, small, and she uses “i” instead of “I” which makes her seem even more innocent and small. Furthermore, it's just not... exciting. It is not fresh. Sure, it is raw and exposed and minimalist which is what the author is going for but I've seen this achieved so much more tactfully (I quite enjoy a lot of @nayyirah.waheed)– there needs to be SOMETHING in there to hold on to.. some subversive use of language or line, some new metaphor, a delight in sound, SOMETHING. There's just nothing to unpack, nothing that refreshes my view of the world. Instead, it just seems like someone cracked open a damaged 21-year-old, and this spilled on the page. I guess that's what she was going for? It just feels immature.

The last section started to get there for me, but there was still no poem I finished thinking “Damn.” Which is how I evaluate a good poem. When it makes me realize something. Makes me pause. See the world just a little bit different. Makes me think “this person is so fucking good with words it almost hurts.” That never happened.

But I see why this book has gotten so popular. It is exactly BECAUSE there is nothing to unpack, BECAUSE the lines are so short, BECAUSE the language is so accessible and metaphors are so simple and sparse. So on the one hand, I'm like “cool, this gets people interested in poetry who wouldn't otherwise be!” but then I'm also like “but this is actually not very good poetry...“

So in conclusion I am conflicted about this book and its role in society and whether or not good poetry is forever dead to pop culture. Like the fact that this is a best-seller is actually upsetting to me. But maybe it's a bestseller because it has helped other women find a home in their body and heal their traumas and that is a beautiful thing. Does it make me a bad person then, to think this is truly shitty poetry? I have to think more about it.