Homebody: A Guide to Creating Spaces You Never Want to Leave

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Receiving this book as a Christmas present from my son this past year, was a delight. I have slowly gone through each section reading and viewing the pictures of their home and others she has created, providing me with various visuals. It gives insight into how they started off and the epiphanies/lessons-learned she has garnered over the years. I am a huge fan of Joana Gaines' design aesthetic/philosophy. I have followed Joana and Chip's show 'Fixer Upper' over the years and always came away with something that I truly liked. I don't prescribe to all her looks and 'distressed' being one of them, but how she approaches a space based on her clients personalities and what 'season of life' they are in, shows me the thought and care that goes into the overall design and finished product.

Home Body by Rupi Kaur | Goodreads Home Body by Rupi Kaur | Goodreads

Kaur’s verses use metaphors and similes that spatialize and give form to mind, body, and identity, helping to conceptualize how each plays a part in our emotions. She alternately characterizes these elements as objects, imprinted upon by our experiences, or as individual beings with their own sense of agency. For example, the poem “there are miracles in me / waiting to happen / i am never giving up on myself” poses the self as divine and also mysterious, consisting of unexplored portals. The poem “there is a conversation / happening inside you / pay deep attention / to what your inner world / is saying” makes one conscious of the different components that coexist to make up a person. Through this internal world-building and grandiose, celestial imagery, Kaur provides a compelling understanding of the human body that doesn’t just deserve to be loved, but demands it. I love that most of the twenty-two "case study" homes, introduced at the beginning of the book, are a blend of the six foundational styles (farmhouse, modern, rustic, industrial, traditional, boho); I didn't love that the book is then organized room by room, so it isn't easy to follow which home is which or to really get a good feel for each home as a whole. There is a hasty feeling to this book, the sense of someone fretfully and fitfully sitting in a room for a few nights, hashing it out. Later in the book, Kaur exhibits some self-awareness on this front, writing “your rushing is/ suffocating the masterpieces.” Many of the poems do feel rushed. The old themes could have been let go, or given more time to mature. The new themes perhaps needed more time to develop. There’s a “work in progress” feel to this book, but perhaps that is its charm. In my legal content writing, I often find myself writing for people facing major life transitions, whether it’s the person who has been seriously injured in an accident, the person going through a divorce, the person whose life has been changed by crime, or the person making end-of-life plans. There is a kind of poetry to be found in our moments of greatest uncertainty. Poets have mastered this art. But if Kaur shows us anything it is that there is poetry to be found wherever we write about these transitions. Poetry can be anywhere; everywhere. Kaur reminds me to find the poetry everywhere. About the WriterAmazing, I love every part of it. This is my second poetry by Rupi and this is as good as the other one I read. The writing is great and very relatable, I love that about this book. Below are some quotes from the book. But, hey if it's not broken, don't fix it right? Oh wait... Doesn't she hate capitalism? The hypocrisy. If she truly, TRULY, hates the system, HATES capitalism, she would have gone balls deep into this. She would have broke all boundaries, took a chance on a new writing style. You can't stay stagnant as an artist. Yes, you can have a style, but it's fun evolving and she claims she changes every month. Well, it's not being shown through her writing.

Homebody: A Guide to Creating Spaces You Never Want to Leave

The most hard-hitting, liberating read for me is the first section which actually made me come out of my comfort zone of thinking and believing in what we women ought to believe. This is a lovely book about home design from Joanna Gaines. Thanks to HGTV and Hulu, I've recently become obsessed with the show Fixer Upper, and I was excited to flip through this big book and hear more from Joanna.I had hoped after reading Milk and Honey ( which I review here) that Kaur would mature as a writer. In some ways, Home Body does offer us a more mature Kaur. The second poem in the book unfolds with uncharacteristic restraint. By withholding the subject of the poem, Kaur evokes a sense of suspense. It’s a simple tool in the poet’s toolbelt, but it’s promising to see Kaur taking her first steps into exploring the richness of the poet’s rhetorical options. Kaur wrestles with the consequences of her own success in Home Body. At 28 years of age, Kaur has done the impossible. She has sold over 8 million copies of her books of poetry. Can she top herself? Can she grow and maintain her audience? If her audience grows with her, I think she can do both, just not quite in this book. Her poem, “Productivity Anxiety” could have been shorter. In fact, I’d cross the whole thing out except for one stanza. The writing. Mind. Heart. Rest. Awake. Those are the four segments in this collection of poetry. Each offers an honest look at some key moments in her (and our) life that ultimately helped shape the woman she has become. Some poems will make you a little uncomfortable, some will force you to take a closer look at yourself and others will make you smile. But there will never not be one moment when you don't feel.. something.

Homebody by Joanna Gaines | Waterstones

In “home body,” Kaur sets up a holy trinity for a rich life — one of mind, body, and identity. She uses her accessible and relatable writing to directly enlighten the reader. She holds space for vast emotions and, at the same time, scatters bite-sized images and pieces of language that act like rafts for the reader, providing a way out of negative rabbit holes and into portals to self-love, community, and justice. In a society where so much is wrong, Kaur assures us that all salvation ultimately comes from ourselves. When we are open to the universes inside of us, there are no limits to what we, and our world, can be.As always, I love her poetry when it brings up issues about mental health, relationships and women. But what I loved more about this collection was the way how the issues of productivity, writing, immigrants and a bit of politics were brought up. I find the writing thoroughly genuine and refreshing. I appreciate it more when the author expressed her concern over the unrealistic expectations to write more so that her work would bring her 'more' of what others believe would bring.

home body” Cuts Through the Numbness | Arts | The Harvard “home body” Cuts Through the Numbness | Arts | The Harvard

And perhaps, as a “young adult” book of poetry, there is an appeal to something written more for commiseration than introspection. As a teenager I read Arthur Rimbaud and Mary Karr, and I relished in their depths, in their ability to be indirect at times, in their ability to push the language to its limits. Pushing the language to its limits is not Kaur’s project. Summary: A great design book for beginners, without much specific advice, but with pictures arranged to help you figure out your own style. It was interesting to read her take on a trans-inclusive feminism. As she is often so fixated on her womb and the "female energy" that comes out of it, I have thought many times that she excludes trans women by doing so. Maybe if she had written more than 3 words regarding this topic, her views would have been more clear to me.There is something almost Sapphic to the three-line poem “why does everything / become less beautiful / once it belongs to us.” And there’s something beautiful about the fact of the plainly spoken when it has perhaps not been plainly spoken in poetry: “What if the one I want / is someone who touches me and leaves.” Here is a young woman coming to terms with the complexities of romantic love, the paradoxes of being young and a woman in this society that shames women for their sexuality. There is the need we all have for comfort, and the desire we all have for the thrill of the chase, for the untouchable, for the risky, for the dangerous. We should all be 20 and wild and in love and in doubt and chasing what we cannot have, and Kaur captures some of this feeling. She evokes the unspeakable: that there is a kind of thrill in abuse and a kind of boredom in secure love. I love the sage, if not novel, design advice to tell your story within your home, filling it with things you love ("creating spaces you never want to leave"), rather than adhering to a certain style or guidelines; I didn't love that, even though there are some helpful tips and takeaways here and there, it isn't particularly helpful or insightful overall as a "guide," in my opinion. She also provides some Troubleshooting tips, like how to deal with "Toys Everywhere," in Kid Spaces. TRANSPARENCY....i feel that rating poetry is a very touchy line to run your finger across. The art doesn't judge itself, people judge the art. So with that being said I believe Homebody deserves a five star rating. Rupi Kaur just wrote another book that reflects her own unique experience in life. For that she did great expressing herself...I can now note what I did or didn't like about this collection.