Are you a fan of poetry? I’ll admit it is not for everyone, but then there are some poetry books – fresh, modern, poignant, sweet – that speak right to the heart of it all. Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur is one of those poetry books.

Small in size and with few words on the page, this is a little book that takes you on a journey into the author’s pain and yet comes out the other side with a sweetness to them all — a learning, even if painful, having taken hold through the experience of living.

I was intrigued by the book the first time I picked it up at a bookstore to read and it has never quite lost its grip on me. The book is broken up into four chapters, which reflect emotional periods of time for the author, including: “the hurting,” “the loving,” “the breaking,” and “the healing. See, even following the chapter titles, you can see the author is going to move towards hope in her story.

For me, as I read these poems, it feels like I have my own chapters each under these categories. Probably most of us can chronicle periods of our lives where we hurt, loved, broke, and healed. Taking the journey into this author’s view of life via her poetry is brilliant, accessible, and thought-provoking.

It is an old book by today’s standards, published in 2014, but still worth a read or at least a perusal of a poem or two.