The book on the nightstand: The Sun and her Flowers

Rupi Kaur is back and we were waiting for her.
Her second collection entitled The Sun and Her Flowers brings with it novelties and certainties.

The poems are always accompanied by her drawings with essential features. Simple and clean lines capable of translating the feminine universe into just sketched images.

The economy of the line leaves room on paper in dense, strong, sharp words that strike straight to the heart and stomach, as already expected who after Milk and Honey has become an admirer of her.

you have so much but are always hungry for more
stop looking up at everything you don’t have
and look around at everything you do

The world that the author brings to the surface speaks once again a universal language, that of life and its phases: to wither, to fall, to root and to grow in order to bloom.

We love Rupi and her poems because we find in them a bit of ourselves, and because her verses know exactly what we need.

Kaur reminds us that life takes and gives, raises and brings you down, crushes but also offers the opportunity to get up and to bloom again.

This time the collection not only deal with the love with its complications but also the loss, the pain, the violence, the strength, the femininity, the immigration, the infanticide and intergenerational relationship, especially that with her mother.

i stand
on the sacrifices
of a million women before me
thinking
what can i do
to make this mountain taller
so the women after me
can see farther

In The Sun and Her Flowers we find the subdivision into chapters, which are five here:

Wilting

you left
and i wanted you still
yet i deserved someone
who was willing to stay

Falling

i notice everything i do not have
and decide it is beautiful

Rooting

my mother sacrificed her dreams
so i could dream

Rising

when you start loving someone new
you laugh at the indecisiveness of love
remember when you were sure the last one was the one
and now here you are redefining the one all over again

Blooming

to hate
is an easy lazy thing
but to love
takes strength
everyone has
but not all are
willing to practice

It is in that white space between the words that Rupi speaks of the readers to whom who reads it, without mediation.

it has been one of the greatest and most difficult years of my life. i learned everything is temporary. moments. feelings. people. flowers. i learned love is about giving. everything. and letting it hurt.

Her verses feel authentic, they are

poems to reflect on, reflecting ourselves.

I would want to read Rupi Kaur at the age of twenty to see what I could not understand.

At thirty I read The Sun and Her Flowers and I find pieces of me that I did not even remember anymore.

Tomorrow’s me will still leaf through these pages because they will continue to have something to say to wife, companion, friend and woman that I will be.

Reading time
poetic autumn nights with Rupi Kaur