Milk and Honey, a collection of poems by 20-something Canadian social media personality Rupi Kaur, has received a huge amount of exposure since its release in 2016. It’s basically the only contemporary poetry book you can buy on sale at Target. And, as with anything popular, Milk and Honey is facing an inevitable backlash. It has also become a meme.
There’s a growing trend of taking absurd quotes from the defunct video site Vine (R.I.P.) and using Photoshop to pass them off as pages from Milk and Honey. Some are obvious jokes, and others … well, if you haven’t read the book, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were real poems.
The trend seems to have started with this tweet by RicardoJKay, which throws shade at Rupi Kaur by implying that adding line breaks to any chunk of text makes it just as poetic as Milk and Honey. Even if it’s “Step the fuck up, Kyle” Vine or the classic “Post up.”
https://twitter.com/ricardojkay/status/878733251547848704
Other Kaur detractors picked it up and ran with it, making Vine quotes look like actual pages from the book. Notable entries include the “Miss Keisha” Vine
https://twitter.com/sadmexi/status/893389177588502528
and the infamous jellybean story:
https://twitter.com/gigglesphil/status/894031091664801792
And Jared, who never learned how to read:
milk and honey got real deep 😔❤️ pic.twitter.com/mDLzvX9CN4
— bec (@sspresomartini) August 4, 2017
Twitter’s Bobby (@bobby) was so incensed at Kaur’s poems that he went off on a long, mocking rant, culminating in one brilliant Photoshop:
sorry but this shit sucks so bad lol pic.twitter.com/axjlIv1hkn
— bobby (@bobby) July 23, 2017
i was a
bottle
of mustard
but you put
ketchup
on
your
hot dog— bobby (@bobby) July 23, 2017
i
am my own
dad— bobby (@bobby) July 23, 2017
raindrop
drop top
smokin on
cookie
in the
hotbox
-rupi kaur— bobby (@bobby) July 23, 2017
— bobby (@bobby) July 23, 2017
What makes Milk and Honey such a target of mockery? Partially, it’s how successful it’s been. Few poetry books ever become social media sensations, let alone receive the kind of exposure and mainstream marketing push Kaur’s book did. It’s sold more than a million copies. And then there’s its main audience: young women on Instagram and Tumblr. The internet gives especially harsh treatment to popular things young women love, often dismissing them as vapid just because girls like them. There’s a little bit of that going on with the Milk and Honey Vine quote meme.
But there’s also mockery of poetry in general, and its perceived pretensions. Kaur’s poetry, which was described in the New York Times as having “artless vulnerability,” is just an easy target.
“People aren’t used to poetry that’s so easy and simple,” Kaur herself has said.
Understandably, the meme is a bit divisive. Some people hate it
https://twitter.com/JennaeCecelia/status/894543171853701120
https://twitter.com/todoiidekus/status/894400900411904006
https://twitter.com/corgisdjh/status/894379101837967360
https://twitter.com/missedengrace/status/894503918071361537
while others think it’s the best thing that’s happened to the internet in quite some time.
https://twitter.com/yuehuaent/status/894900353573019649
I swear to god this Rupi Kaur/Milk and Honey meme is the funniest meme all year… modern poetry in its purest form
— Anne Tifa (@livid_e) August 6, 2017
https://twitter.com/jasmineafahmy/status/893909471096954881
Hey, at least teens are talking about poetry again!