The Sun and Her Flowers

by Rupi Kaur

Paperback, 2017

Status

Available

Publication

Andrews McMeel Publishing (2017), Edition: First Edition, 256 pages

Description

Fiction. Poetry. HTML: 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.

User reviews

LibraryThing member justagirlwithabook
So much hype around this collection of poems. I think it was a good collection but it didn't live up to the hype for me. Some pieces of poetry were very unique and inspirational, while others just fell flat and read like thoughts on a page - stream of consciousness rather than captivating,
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insightful poetry and masterfully crafted language. Not to say that it was bad, but it wasn't as amazing as I had hoped based on all the buzz! It was good for some easy poetry.
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LibraryThing member ecataldi
LOVED LOVED LOVED this! Normally I'm not one for poetry but Rupi Kaur showed me what's up. I didn't think anything could top her last collection (Milk and Honey), but my god, this is heaven. It's profoundly emotional, soul jarring, and introspective. It's word porn of the highest order. The Sun and
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Her Flowers is split into five sections: wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming. Rooting was especially moving, delving into immigration and making a new life in a new country, her poems about her mother are profoundly touching. The accompanying illustrations really add to her poems, helping elicit even more of an emotional response from the reader. Her poems range from break-ups, self doubt, self-love, trust, immigration, and womanhood. I literally loved this book so much, I went out and bought it because I knew I had to possess such a a beautiful collection. A definite must read, especially for women.
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LibraryThing member akblanchard
Rupi Kapur captures the angst inherent in late adolescence in her poetry collection The Sun and Her Flowers, including such fraught topics as feminism, self-love, body image, painful breakups, and even rape. There's also a section about her parents' immigration. Young adults who can relate to her
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short, accessible verses and simple drawings will find much to treasure here.

As for me, I don't think that I'm the reader the poet had in mind. I found that a little of Kaur's poetic sensibility goes a long way.
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LibraryThing member JillKenna
Loved this collection just as much as the first one! Can't wait to read more
LibraryThing member courtneygiraldo
Rupi Kaur is my favorite.

After binging on Milk and Honey of course I ran to Amazon for her second book of poetry immediately. Lucky for me, the kindle version was free for Prime members!

Broken into 5 parts; wilting, falling, rooting, rising, blooming; Rupi takes the reader through various
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depictions of love, in all it’s many forms and stages. Her writing is not only beautiful but deeply thought provoking. She has an uncanny ability to portray so much depth in such simple sentences. Her illustrations provide the perfect accompaniment to her words in that same simple yet powerful way that I have come to expect and love.
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LibraryThing member schatzi
I purchased this book before I'd read Milk and Honey, and honestly, I wouldn't have bought this book at all had I not fallen for the hype of Rupi Kaur's poetry before sitting down and reading it.

This book offers some more emotion and I feel like I got to "know" the author more in this collection,
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but I just don't care for Rupi's style at all. Most of her poems just feel like random sentences (sometimes run-on sentences) that are oddly spaced, oftentimes followed by a title that sums up the poem. A sample of my own making:

Basically
a bunch of
sentences
and random
spaces that are
somehow
meant
to pass as
poetry
--This Book's Contents

I've taken to reading more poetry lately, and the more I read, the more I dislike Kaur's work.
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LibraryThing member ReadersCandyb
I prefer to not review poetry because it's a collection of someone's inner thoughts and you shouldn't really judge that... However, I need the credit for my goodreads challenge so I will say this... If you are a woman, buy this book. If you need inspiration, buy this book. I found it to be thought
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provoking and very well wrote. I loved how it pushed me to dive below the surface of my thoughts and I appreciated the focus on insecurities and personal flaws.
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LibraryThing member Faith_Murri
consider me surprised
to find
i enjoyed this book
despite not liking the first
opinions change and people grow
both as readers and as writers
never judge an author
by their first book
judge them by their second

This pretty much addressed all of my criticisms of the first book. It wasn't just about sex
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(though there was definitely a lot of that); it was about family and love and what it means to be an immigrant. It actually made me cry on several occasions, and while I marked only 3 poems in the first book, I marked 25 in this. It was worlds away from the messy nonsense of Milk and Honey. It felt more real and genuine. It felt less like a 13-year-old's tumblr poetry and more like an adult. The narrative poems were some of my favorites and the shorter ones had messages that weren't reiterated repeatedly. I really liked it. I'm glad the years between this publication and the previous showed some growth and honed skill.
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LibraryThing member Shahnareads
Now here is a poetry book I enjoyed. Just like her first one I was moved by her words. Simple and too the point. Full of emotion and pain and love. I hope she continues to share with us.
LibraryThing member marcejewels
From my blog

There are times things come into your life at the perfect moment and the sun and her flowers was one of those moments. My niece bought this as my Christmas gift and I decided to start the year with it. Poetry is my simple pleasure but I hardly read any so I was grateful for this gift. I
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can see myself reading this one again.

This was a powerful book about the stages of grief, told in 5 chapters. Wilting reminded me of a broken relationship, the beginning of the grieving process. Falling was a heart felt moving chapter about the importance of self-love. Rooting was about diversity, the sacrifice we take for our families, the legacy. Rising started to give us the promise of new love. Blooming was moments of beauty, blessings and special lessons. These are my interpretations of the moments and chapters while reading the book.

I read 99% on my Kindle so reading a book felt like a new experience, going down memory lane. I never liked to dog ear books but without the highlight Kindle feature I had to, there was so much to love and have at my fingertips. I would like to share a poem from each chapter for you, hope you enjoy them.

Wilting

day by day i realize
everything i miss about you
was never there in the first place

- the person i fell in love with was a mirage

Falling

if i am the longest relationship
of my life
isn't it time to
nurture intimacy
and love
with the person
i lie in bed with each night

- acceptance

Rooting

when it came to listening
my mother taught me silence
if you are drowning their voice with yours
how will you hear them she asked

when it came to speaking
she said do it with commitment
every word you say
is your own responsibility

when it came to being
she said be tender and tough at once
you need to be vulnerable to live fully
but rough enough to survive it all

when it came to choosing
she asked me to be thankful
for the choices i had that
she never had the privilege of making

- lessons from mumma

Rising

the right one does not
stand in your way
they make space for you
to step forward

Blooming

to hate
is an easy lazy thing
but to love
takes strength
everyone has
but not all are
willing to practice
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LibraryThing member lydia1879
I liked this!

Rupi Kaur introduced me to a style of poetry a few years ago that I really liked, and I embarked on a rather winding journey, picking up poets along the way whose work I really enjoyed and was drawn to. Nayyirah Waheed's salt, Yrsa Daley-Ward's bone, Warsan Shire's works and Vivek
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Shraya's poetry sat happily among hers in my mind.

As such, I'm very grateful to Kaur for introducing me to a genre that I now have a deep love and affection for. milk and honey, her first collection made a rather big impression on me, and I enjoyed her second collection a lot too.

I really liked the section about immigrants -- while I'm not a person of colour I recently moved to Canada and have started the immigration process there, which is long and impossible, so hearing her poems about accents and splitting yourself across two worlds and becoming a bridge was a great comfort to me.

I actually like a lot of her very spider-y artwork -- the fine lines feel very personal and a lot of the time I think they can communicate something which the text cannot.

However, I once again, as in my review with milk and honey, don't like the author's jealousy at all. I despise jealousy in general and I find it exhausting. I was in a long-distance relationship for about three years so any jealousy I had just died because it had to in order for my relationship with my wife to work.

Also, while I really like the title of the poem at the bottom of a page because it feels like it adds extra emphasis on the realisation of the poem, sometimes I was confused as to where the first poem ended and the next began. Not all poems were titled and some were, so often I would read the poems separately and then together, and get a completely different meaning each time.

I'm sure if Kaur knew about it she wouldn't mind, because each person takes a different meaning from any part of any poem and formatting isn't as important as feeling. BUT as a reader, I like to read poetry really effortlessly in order to best feel the emotions or connect with the text, and that whole title / no-title thing just took me out of the text while I tried to guess if she'd written one poem or two.

The collection grew on me the more I read it, it was an easy read but the problems I had with it are problems I've had with her previous work so that feels... almost a little discouraging.

Hopefully, this collection will grow more and more fond and affectionate in my memory.
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LibraryThing member SebastianMihail
This is the BEST book of poetry in 2017?
It’s a joke.
A BAD ONE.
LibraryThing member Linyarai
I thought this volume was just as good as her first one, I loved all of the poems and her writing style.
LibraryThing member Megan_Ann_Kountzman
I absolutely love these poems. The art on each page is lovely as well. I like the story and message being told with each poem.
LibraryThing member vdt_melbourne
Is easy then difficult to read. Make sure you read up about it before diving in. Beautiful written, trigger warning, re sexual assaults.
LibraryThing member Jenniferforjoy
 
 DNFd @ 34% and I really should have much earlier. 

Euck, vom, wow I hated this. It felt like reading the diary of an angsty 14 year old with doodles to match. I'll pass, thank you, I have my own old diary that I can go read if that's what I'm looking for.

Since this is poetry and the topics are
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so clearly personal, it feels really hard to review it fully without just feeling cruel to the author. Suffice it to say that it's nothing new, nothing original, and a bit tedious in it's sensation of "I am the only one / first one who has ever felt this way" vibes. Rolled my eyes a lot for a few different reasons. I'm pretty sure I DNFd one of her other sets in the distant past and clearly put it out of my head. Won't be returning again, for sure. 


A friend described this as "appealing to insta-poetry" and damn if that doesn't feel completely accurate. Pithy, short things that are supposed to seem profound. Generally, are not.
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LibraryThing member Faith_Murri
consider me surprised
to find
i enjoyed this book
despite not liking the first
opinions change and people grow
both as readers and as writers
never judge an author
by their first book
judge them by their second

This pretty much addressed all of my criticisms of the first book. It wasn't just about sex
Show More
(though there was definitely a lot of that); it was about family and love and what it means to be an immigrant. It actually made me cry on several occasions, and while I marked only 3 poems in the first book, I marked 25 in this. It was worlds away from the messy nonsense of Milk and Honey. It felt more real and genuine. It felt less like a 13-year-old's tumblr poetry and more like an adult. The narrative poems were some of my favorites and the shorter ones had messages that weren't reiterated repeatedly. I really liked it. I'm glad the years between this publication and the previous showed some growth and honed skill.
Show Less
LibraryThing member foof2you
One of the great things about reading is that it opens doors to other cultures and ways of life. This by Rupi Kaur is one of these books in it she deals with grief, love and empowering herself. A unique writing style that took a little getting use to but a good book.

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2017-10-03

Physical description

256 p.; 5 inches

ISBN

1449486797 / 9781449486792

UPC

615145025650

Local notes

poetry

Other editions

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