Starred review from May 1, 2018
Kaur, author of the immensely popular Milk and Honey, writes and sketches in the same plain, honest, and shattering style about healing. Her fresh, poignant metaphor of a broken relationship as an abandoned construction site sets the stage for the structured volume, divided into sections ("wilting," "falling," "rooting," "rising," and "blooming"): "it isn't what we left behind/that breaks me/but what we could have built/had we stayed." Kaur then asks, "do you think flowers will grow here/when you and i are off/building something new/with someone else." The author frames several longer prose poems graphically as books within a book in which she digs into the root causes of her mistakes and her inspiration, such as her cultural upbringing to never speak up and the sacrifices of her mother, an East Indian immigrant, respectively. Kaur exudes a wisdom and reverence for life that she melds with the social justice ideals of feminism and equity. She speaks to teens' struggles to accept, to forgive, and to love with intensity and respect: "when i stopped searching for home within others and lifted the foundation of home within myself...there were no roots more intimate." VERDICT A must-buy for poetry collections.-Sara Lissa Paulson, City-As-School High School, New York City
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