Crocus in the Snow or What Resonates . . .

Rupi Kaur, a Punjabi-Canadian poet, came on my radar recently--reading about her, hearing about her from friends.
 was spurred to purchase her books just to know more about Rupi Kaur, poet phenomenon. [I still prefer the books to the free Kindle versions, and I think someone should invent “space bags” for books--a topic for another blog].

I knew that Kaur self-published her first book before a publisher, Andrews McMeel Publishing, picked up the first one, and now her second book is out.  Based on an article published in The New York Times on October 5, her first book, “Milk and Honey” has sold 2.5 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 25 languages. Over the last two years, it has spent 77 weeks on The New York Times Trade Paperback Best-Seller List. Her second book, “The Sun and Her Flowers,” was released this week and is No. 2 on Amazon’s best-seller list.”  At the age of 25, she has “spoken” to millions of people via Instagram where she has nearly two million followers. The same article mentions the 1000, and yes, that’s three zeroes, people who showed up for a reading that month. That’s something few poets dream of in 2018.

She has been broadly criticized for two things: plagiarism and for not writing “real” poetry.  According to a Buzzfeed article, August 4, 2017, “The Problem With Rupi Kaur's Poetry,” her work is similar in style particulary to Nayyirah Waheed and Warsan Shire.  Some have gone so far as to post Waheed's poems side by side with Kaur's to make the point. As you might imagine, commenters differed on the issue. Her free verse form is loose and lacking in the “traditional craft” of poetry.  She’s also been blasted for many choices she’s made including the similarity of her writing to others, capitalizing on social media, classifying her writing as “the story of a young brown woman” to gain traction, and being “disingenuous” by exploiting the stories of other women  who have experienced the personal traumas and emotions about which she writes. She defends herself on all points.  I guess I admire her oomph. She moves boldly in the world. Maybe someday she’ll look back and question her choices, but almost instant fame is fraught with regret or missteps.  What she says speaks equally to the anxieties of Golden Globe red-carpeters that flash on the screenfor their 15 seconds of fame and to the 12-year-old that sat in my classroom, downcast, and then later cut herself in the school bathroom or at home at night. 

From the sun and her flowers

i reduced my body to aesthetics
forgot the work it did to keep me alive
with every beat and breath
declared it a grand failure for not looking like theirs
searched everywhere for a miracle
foolish enough to not realize
​I was already living in one


​Her writing spins me back to the time when, at her age, I was collecting books and copying sayings in notebooks that sparked a bit of truth for me. Odd choices, maybe, but Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet comes to mind.  It still sits on my shelf, and my mother asked for a passage from it to be read at her memorial service. I have another collection of books I will not part with—small books of “poems” with just a few lines on a page written by Joan Walsh Anglund.  I could go back to any one of her books and be moved by what on first glance may seem insubstantial.  And yet . . .  “The Past writes with indelible ink.  We cannot erase her story", or "In War . . . or Peace, . . . the wrens still build their nests," both poems from her book Crocus in the Snow.  Undoubtedly there were those who did not call those "poems."  Have others said the same before and maybe more expansively and  been subsequently recognized? Surely, but I find these word droplets still sing for me. I will posit that is the imagery that works for me best

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I have a sense that the same will be true for readers of Rupi Kaur years down the road, her words giving voice to the long-ignored emotions and thoughts of women about body and status in the world. Another theme of hers is empowerment. Is the time in which Kaur writes ripe for what she has to say?  Yes.  Is what she writes and posts raw?  Yes.  Is it resonating with people of all color who line up at public venues to hear her read (as many as 1000 at a time)?  Yes. We choose our “heroes,” the “voices” we carry with us, and if Kaur’s poetic voice speaks to many, I find no need to be a critic.  Right now is "her time", and it's a time for this kind of vibrancy on this planet!

Links to more info about Rupi Kaur

PBS interview

The Guardian

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