the sun and her flowers

home body by Rupi Kaur (2020)

home body is Kaur’s third book. It follows the same formula that made her earlier books so successful and is illustrated with the familiar line drawings. The book is divided into four chapters: “mind,” “heart,” “rest,” and “awake.” The themes are not unlike those in the sun and her flowers, including love, acceptance, family, and community.

“Sunflowers” by Mary Oliver (1986)

Mary Oliver is a well-known American poet; “Sunflowers” was published in her collection Dream Work. It consists of nine unrhymed quatrains. A first-person speaker addresses readers directly, asking them to “Come with me” to observe the sunflowers. The poem is far more sophisticated than Kaur’s work, but like Kaur’s sunflowers, Oliver describes them with the aid of the pathetic fallacy. They are “shy / but want to be friends” (Lines 12-13) and have “wonderful stories” (Line 14) to tell.

A Strangely Wrapped Gift by Emily Juniper (2020)

Like Kaur, Emily Juniper is a successful “instapoet” whose work is also published in book form. Also, like Kaur’s milk and honey, A Strangely Wrapped Gift was originally self-published. This was in 2017, under the name Emily Byrnes with illustrations by Lizzy Duga.