The Sun and Her Flowers

   As I've gotten older I've grown to love reading poetry. I remember in high school having to read poetry, and always getting so annoyed because I couldn't be bothered to enjoy the reading. But now I'm enjoying poetry all day, every day! Except for when I read Rapi Kaur's poetry...

  When I first saw The Sun and Her Flowers I skimmed through a couple of her poems and was moderately enjoying them, so I brought the book up to the register and started reading it when I got home. What as waste of $12! This isn't even poetry! It's

words

with

spaces

between them

to look



a r t s y.


  The content of the poems was barely there. Everything felt surface level, and not one bit like any effort was put into her work. Good poetry should make you feel something and require you to think - a lesson Rapi Kaur could stand to learn. There were even some poems that made me feel angry to have bought her book. I often times would finish a poem and think "what was the point of this poem?" only to come up empty handed.
   I do realize that I'm being quite harsh on her subpar work, but I assure you I really did give it a chance. While reading her second book, I spent some time re-reading her words to see if I missed an underlying meaning... shockingly, I did not. As I said before, this work felt very surface level. This book felt as though Kaur was shooting for another best seller (how her first book was a best seller is beyond me, but I'll save that for another day). Building on this, it is quite evident that Miss Kaur has not realized her potential. There is definitely room for her to build and become a great poet, but she is clearly just writing for the paychecks.
  Also, another major flaw was how lazy this felt. Besides being surface level, this book really felt like an essay I would have BS'd the night before it was due... Not something I'm really trying to read by someone who is supposed to be a good writer. Reading her work, I can almost envision how she wrote it - she would experience something normal and jot it down and then say "I'm going to publish this piece of trash!" Ugh! Rapi Kaur, please! Work harder!
  While 99.9% of her poems were horrible and made me want to rip my eyes out, there were a few redeeming lines throughout the book. And by a few, I really mean less than five. To me, this book barely earns a 2/10... really, the two is quite generous considering how horrendous this poetry was.

   If you are looking to buy good poetry, please do not buy Rapi Kaur's lazy book! My all time favorite poetry book is Eighteen Years  by Madisen Kuhn! Definitely go grab a copy of this book from her website!