![\"\"](\"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2017\/11\/milk-and-honey-192x300.jpg\")
Kaur\u2019s 2015 debut, Milk and Honey<\/i><\/a>, is split into four chapters: \u201cthe hurting,\u201d \u201cthe loving,\u201d \u201cthe breaking,\u201d and \u201cthe healing.\u201d Her minimalist poems are told in free verse, and chronicle racial and female identity, gender divide, abuse, and survival, among other topics. Most are paired with sketches drawn by Kaur herself, and she has been acclaimed for her live performances<\/a>. Her latest collection, The Sun and Her Flowers<\/i><\/a>, was released this past month, and is modeled nearly identically. The black-and-white aesthetic of Milk and Honey<\/i> has switched to one of more color in The Sun and Her Flowers<\/i>, and the latter is split into five chapters: \u201cwilting,\u201d \u201cfalling,\u201d \u201crooting,\u201d \u201crising,\u201d and \u201cblooming.\u201d It was written post-election, and deals with more worldly themes of personal and collective liberation, community, and hope. Kaur\u2019s prose has become more refined, and her poetry is increasingly self-aware, intricate, and structured in The Sun<\/em>. Nonetheless, her overall style has not fluctuated. Her free verse is still on full display, and excerpts are just as accessible for social media posts.<\/p>\n It\u2019s Kaur\u2019s accessibility that makes her someone special. Kaur turns poetry accessible. Her short, sweet poems create a perfect prototype to take over social networking. They\u2019re easy to read and easy to consume, and from a place where most adolescents are introduced to poetry through long-winded stanzas from the nineteenth century, it introduces them to the world of poetry and provides a medium more identifiable to the masses. With the rise of these so-called \u201cInsta poets<\/a>,\u201d the market has found an increase in sales, with last year being the highest it\u2019s ever been<\/a>. It\u2019s new, and it\u2019s fresh, and that means it\u2019s susceptible to criticism. And Kaur, undoubtedly the most famous of \u201cInsta poets,\u201d is at the end of it.<\/p>\n Kaur can\u2019t seem to secure her place in the literary world. She has inspired think pieces<\/a> galore, with some blaming her of plagiarism<\/a>, and many commenting of poor writing. But this is nothing new. Kaur writes poetry that appeals specifically to a young female demographic, and our culture has a tendency to downplay, patronize, and ultimately dismiss feminine expression. It happened when Taylor Swift<\/a> first broke out into the scene with her laments on failed relationships. It still occurs when discussing Sylvia Plath\u2019s legacy<\/a>, and her lure with adolescent minds. It\u2019s an unfortunate reality that female minds\u2014notably when artistic expression comes into play\u2014are never taken as seriously as their male counterparts. Kaur is just the latest victim of a totem pole of female artists who never garnered the appropriate recognition.<\/p>\n Viewing young adult literature as too \u201cjuvenile\u201d to be considered literary is highly antiquated. Many have broken this trope: from Judy Blume, to Laurie Halse Anderson, to Stephen Chbosky, to S.E. Hinton; however, they\u2019ve all met with their fair share of controversy<\/a>, and have taken years to finally be taken seriously<\/a>. But Kaur is a voice unlike these. She, herself, is a young woman of color writing commentary on identifying as just that. She doesn\u2019t look like her contemporaries: she was born in India to a Sikh family. She doesn\u2019t fit the mold of the white authors around her. Trying to raise a voice to those like her, Kaur is doing something rarely seen. She is being heard in the mainstream, forcing discourse not only on poetry, but on racial and gender divide as well. The delegitimization of her poetry, in a field that is known for its versatility and fluidity, is both problematic and closed-minded.<\/p>\n It comes down simply to the nature of language. Artistic expression is open to many definitions, and language can be toyed, experimented, and messed with however a poet chooses. That\u2019s because literature is fluid. Throughout the course of history, what is literary has been known to constantly alter. There has been era upon era labeled to reflect this notion. Just because Kaur creates poetry nonstandard to what has been seen before, and because her enjambment may not be as crafted as Keats or Byron does not mean it isn\u2019t resonating with audiences. Because her poetry is perfectly styled for an Instagram aesthetic does not mean it\u2019s any less respectable. Times change, and poetry must as well. Art is just as much a result of its audience as it is the artist, and Kaur has found her audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kyle Labe\/\/Blog Writer It\u2019s nearly impossible not to come across Rupi Kaur nowadays. She has gone from humble Tumblr origins to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1032"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1367,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032\/revisions\/1367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2017\/11\/sun-and-her-flowers-194x300.jpg\")