Analysis: Poem #2

Poem #2: the sun and her flowers (page 148-151)

broken english

i think about the way my father →

pulled the family out of poverty→

without knowing what a vowel was

and my mother raised four children

without being able to construct

a perfect sentence in english

a discombobulated couple

who landed in the new world with hopes

that left the bitter taste of rejection in their mouths

no family

no friends

just man and wife

two university degrees that meant nothing

one mother tongue that was broken now

one swollen belly with a baby inside

a father worrying about jobs and rent

cause no matter what this baby was coming

and they thought to themselves for a split second

was it worth it to put all of our money

into the dream of a country

that is swallowing us whole

papa looks at his woman’s eyes

and sees loneliness living where the iris was

wants to give her a home in a country that looks at her

with the word visitor wrapped around its tongue

on their wedding day

she left an entire village to be his wife

now she left an entire country to be a warrior

and when the winter came

they had nothing but the heat of their own bodies

to keep the coldness out

like two brackets they faced one another

to hold the dearest parts of them—their children—close

they turned a suitcase full of clothes into a life

and regular paychecks

to make sure the children of immigrants

wouldn’t hate them for being the children of immigrants

they worked too hard

you can tell by their hands

their eyes are begging for sleep

but our mouths were begging to be fed

and that is the most artistic thing i have ever seen

it is poetry to these ears

that have never heard what passion sounds like

and my mouth is full of likes and ums when

i look at their masterpiece

cause there are no words in the english language

that can articulate that kind of beauty

i can’t compact their existence into twenty-six letters

and call it a description

i tried once

but the adjectives needed to describe them

don’t even exist

so instead i ended up with pages and pages

full of words followed by commas and

more words and more commas

only to realize there are some things

in the world so infinite

they could never use a full stop

so how dare you mock your mother

when she opens her mouth and

broken english spills out

don’t be ashamed of the fact that

she split through countries to be here

so you wouldn’t have to cross a shoreline

her accent is thick like honey

hold it with your life

it’s the only thing she has left of home

don’t you stomp on that richness

instead hang it up on the walls of museums

next to dali and van gogh

her life is brilliant and tragic

kiss the side of her tender cheek

she already knows what it feels like

to have an entire nation laugh when she speaks

she is more than our punctuation and language

we might be able to paint pictures and write stories

but she made an entire world for herself

how is that for art

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Colour-marking key:

│Metaphor

│Simile

│Juxtaposition of incongruent images

│Enjambment (present throughout the entire poem)

│Allusion

│Personification (underline)

│Parallelism (bolded)

│Hyperbole

│Synecdoche

│Alliteration

│Symbolism

│Imagery

On the left, the official lyric video for this poem has been included for individuals interested in listening to Rupi Kaur's narration of her poem, broken english.

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ANALYSIS

The meaning interpreted from each stanza:

━

Stanza 1:

In this stanza, Rupi describes the hardships that she and her family encountered as a result of being immigrants in a vastly different country. Despite the seemingly insurmountable odds that Kaur's parents faced—the inability to fluently speak and write the English language, whilst at the same time possessing invalid university degrees, as well as being away from their homeland and the support of their relatives—they were still able to raise four children, including Rupi. Despite being on brink of debt due to unsteady jobs, in addition to affording rent and other basic necessities, Kaur's parents still decided to bear another child.

━

Stanza 2:

The topic of this stanza is a continuation of the end of the previous stanza, in which Rupi's parents question whether or not their immigration and money spent to reside in Canada was ultimately worth their immense efforts. As well, this stanza speaks about how Rupi's father had a strong desire to create a sense of home for Rupi's mother in a country that view and treats them as outcasts. At the same time, this stanza also commends the incredible courage demonstrated by the decision of Rupi's mother to leave a country and the people invaluable to her to immigrate to Canada. At the end of the stanza, it mentions how the "heat of their own bodies" was the only possession keeping them alive in the cold of a Canadian winter, symbolizing the immense loneliness felt by Rupi and her family in this foreign country.

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Stanza 3:

In this stanza, Rupi is emphasizing the beauty of her parents' immense efforts and hard work to keep themselves and their children afloat with the basic necessities of life. Kaur tries her best to describe the boundless beauty of these efforts but is ultimately unable to genuinely convey her emotions using only the rules and lexicon of the English language.

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Stanza 4:

At the beginning of the fourth stanza, although the utilization of the second-person perspective makes it appear that Rupi is chastising the reader for disrespecting their mother, the "reader" she is chastising is her younger self, who initially felt immense shame and embarrassment of the being the child of an immigrant parent. It is in this same stanza that Rupi cherishes the cultures, accents, and traditions of her mother and home country, and how those unique aspects of one's home country must be preserved.

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Stanza 5:

This stanza, although it only contains five words, eloquently summarizes the message of the entire poem. From a literal perspective, Rupi mentions in this poem how one should not ridicule their mother for her inability to speak English fluently, but should instead treat it as art. This helps to unveil the overarching theme of this poem, being that one should cherish and view another's "imperfections" as an aspect of their identity, culture, and worldview.

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