the sun and her flowers
2017
- self-actualization (psychology)
- poetry
- american poetry
- nyt:combined-print-and-e-book-fiction=2017-10-22
- poetry (poetic works by one author)
- american poetry -- 21st century
- self-actualization (psychology) -- poetry
- women
The story
From rupi kaur, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of milk and honey, comes her long-awaited second collection of poetry. A vibrant and transcendent journey about growth and healing. Ancestry and honoring one’s roots. Expatriation and rising up to find a home within yourself. Divided into five chapters and illustrated by kaur, the sun and her flowers is a journey of wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming. A celebration of love in all its forms. this is the recipe of life said my mother as she held me in her arms as i wept think of those flowers you plant in the garden each year they will teach you that people too must wilt fall root rise in order to bloom
What it’s like
Short, spare lines scattered across cream pages, with hand-drawn line illustrations of flowers, faces and bodies sitting beside the text, so the book reads as a slow, tactile object more than a block of words. The voice is intimate and confessional, plain-spoken in lowercase with few capitals and little punctuation, and the imagery leans on gardens, sunlight, soil, seasons and the body. Its mood is tender and quietly hopeful, a warm melancholy that gradually turns toward renewal, with grief, heartbreak and displacement moving through the pages as steadily as the blooming metaphor. Each of its five sections is a short, self-contained stretch of reading, so it can be dipped into in a sitting or two. Themes of love in its many forms, family, migration and self-acceptance come up often, but the register stays gentle and reflective; there is no graphic content, violence or explicit sexuality, only mild sadness and the occasional frank line about the body. It suits a rainy Sunday, a bedside book to read a page at a time, or a gift for someone going through a hard season, and it is for readers who want consoling, uncomplicated poetry that feels like a quiet conversation.
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