Home Body is Unfinished Verse

 

 

Home Body (2020)

By Rupi Kaur

Andrews McNeel Publishing, 194 pages.

★★

 

When all I was in my early 20s, I wrote reams of heartfelt but horrible prose poetry. Most of it tumbled into four boxes: I am depressed, I'm in love, I'm not in love, I’m depressed again. Rinse and repeat. Life is nothing if not a teacher and I came to learn that reducing all experience to just a few categories was naïve.

 

I mention this because Rupi Kaur’s Home Body reminds me of my younger self, and not in a good way. She fills a few more boxes than I–abuse memories, ethnic identity, production anxiety, masturbation–but she doesn't escape the young poet’s trap of placing herself at the center of a very constricted universe. Even her stick figure doodles bespeak a 20-something mind that has not yet come to grips with the reality that most of us find ways to muddle through life’s downturns so that the sublime moments seem even more special.

 

Kaur, an India-born Sikh-Canadian, divides her collection into four parts–Mind, Heart, Rest, Awake – and the very best way to approach it is to not think of as poetry at all. The overarching theme is it she refuses to be broken, and that’s a fine approach to healing but a long way from being finished verse. What stands out is not entire compositions–even though most are very short–but lines such as these:

 

you are lonely/but you're not alone/– there is a difference

 

i am not my worst days/i am not what happened to me

 

your voice is your sovereignty

 

i'm not interested/in a feminism that thinks/simply placing a woman on top/of oppressive systems is progress

 

You can probably see the inherent problem in all of this. Simply using the lower case doesn’t make her into e e cummings. (I tried that as well!) We learn a lot about Kaur’s views on capitalism –she's not a fan–depression, commercialization, manufactured desire, and balance. Her short punchy observations play well on Instagram, but hers are talking points, not poems. As readers we feel her pain and, at resolute moments, sigh with relief but we are also anonymous and faceless. What we cannot be is her therapy group, cheerleading squad, personal sounding board, or writing coach.

 

I don't mean to sound heartless. I'd love to know what Kaur thinks of this work a decade from now. After all, I confessed she reminded me of my younger self. In retrospect, though, I'm glad only a few people ever read what I wrote back then. 

 

Rob Weir