"Untitled" by Rupi Kaur
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when the world comes crashing at your feet
it’s okay to let others
help pick up the pieces
if we’re present to take part in your happiness
when your circumstances are great
we are more than capable
of sharing your pain
This is how it works, Bishop. Do you see?
After I read a poem or article, I enjoy learning more about the poet or the author. The poet of this poem is named Rupi Kaur. She actually wrote, published, and illustrated her first poetry collection at age 21! Her poems are filled with emotion and love, compassion, and healing. She was born in India and now is a Canadian poet. She often speaks of her experience, trauma, and relationships.
One question I had about this poem is the author’s reference to “we”. Would that simply be your friends and loved ones to go along with the universal “you”? With that we is he also implying that this poem’s narrators is a universal us.
I feel the audience for this poem is those going through a tough time or a rough patch. The people who have been through so much that they have come to believe nothing will go right. I think Rupi Kaur is trying to reach out to these people and is trying to tell them to let others help them. To let the people in their lives help them get better because it is important to remember there are people who care about you and people you can talk to, who will listen to what you have to say. That is who I believe the intended audience to be.
The poem of the week, written by Rupi Kaur, goes alongside the common theme for this week’s weekly work, mental health. With the addition of Kaur’s poem, it allows us, as a class, to better understand mental health and how it can be shared in different forms of literature. Poetry about mental health provides a different perspective that not everyone sees. Commonly, the reading of articles or blogs is the most in demand learning aspect regarding mental health. Seeing the view of mental health from a few, short lines of poetry can open the eyes of those who read it in a way they never imagined. Allowing students to read this specific poem in this specific time will open the uncomfortable topic of mental health for it is extremely important. This poem allows the conversation to begin and to aid those in need of resources.
The audience for this poem is those going through a tough time. I think Rupi Kaur is trying to reach out to the people that need reassurance and is trying to tell them to let others help them. If you try and lone wolf your whole life will you ever experience happiness or will you just be pretending your whole life? Friends and family lighten up almost every situation so if you have either I would encourage those to get help from one.
This poem really speaks to me. Two weeks ago this poem wouldn’t mean as much to me as it does now. This poem to me means just to allow others to help you. I have realized who my real close friends are. The poem says “we are more than capable of sharing your pain”, which I have noticed my friends trying to do. The poem might be short but it gets the point across.
This poem does speak in different ways to me. Recently while going through stuff and having ups and downs in my life, there is someone who I know is always going to be there. They will go through all the pain I do and won’t leave my side. Reading this is making me realize that. I always have my someone.
The poet seems to be writing/speaking to a general audience in “you.”
The first three words are “When the world.” Both “when” and “world” begin with a “w” and and are open in the sense. Nothing sounds harsh. This is to contrast the next part, which is “comes crashing.” The hard “c” in both words sound like something crunching and breaking. It starts the piece with an emotional roller coaster of sounds.
One question that I had when reading was what does the author mean when he refers to"others"? I believe that when he says others he is referring to family and other close friends to talk to and lean on when times are tough
I hope that someone comes to offer a suggestion here to your inquiry. Could it be our “known” resource people to begin with?
I think the “others” are the people around you, the people that want to see you grow and be there for you when it gets rough.
I think the author is referring to anyone you can lean on. I agree with what you said about family and close friends and believe he is implying “others” are people you are close to.
Look at all of the Ps in this line. We might miss them because they don’t all begin the words in the line, but they are all here making their own little popping sounds.
In a society where people who need help are seen as weak, It’s easy to feel hopeless, especially in a time like this. The poem doesn’t hide the message that it’s ok to ask for help. It does, however, have an underlying theme. Why do we have to be reminded that it’s ok to need help? Why is that not a normalized concept?
What if the “we’re” here references those who surround us in the “fair weather?” Ever hear of the fair-weather friend?
I believe the “we’re” is related directly to “others”. The meaning behind it being if your close friends/family are there during the good times, they should stand by you through the tough ones as well.
Currently our circumstances are quite unusual, but can you consider these times as great? I believe so, due to our human nature and wanting life to be normal again, people are making rash decisions that prolong this situation we are currently in and could possibly be in for years to come. I believe these trying ties to be a pain we are all capable of of sharing.
For me, many words stood out in this poem. The word, “when,” was one of them. This word stood out to me because it is very optimistic. Since Kaur wrote, “When your circumstances are great,” this shows that things won’t always be bad. The word, “when” is showing that your circumstances will be great, but it’s just a matter of when will they be great?
I think empathy is what makes people truly beautiful. Being able to know what others are feeling and building a relationship off of that connection is mesmerizing. Empathy brings people to a level of closeness that is that is hard to explain. I think it is a vital part to healthy relationships, but it does bring up slightly less positive questions. Can one be empathetic to a fault? Does it get to a point where you become too involved in feeling others’ pain that you ignore your own?
I think that “we are more than capable of sharing your pain,” is a good sentence that people need to read. This is because it lets you know that people are there for you when you need them. If you invest into someone else’s feelings you also have to consider your own. This sentence lets me know that people are there for me when I may need them and that it is okay to show your feelings. I mention briefly about sentence six because it ties to sentence seven.
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Seven lines in one stanza.
I think the length of the poem makes it even more powerful. It is short but gets right to the point and leaves no room for doubts. Many poems can become confusing and complicated butt this poem emphasizes how you need to let the people around you help you out during the bad times, especially because they’re there during the good ones. A simple but powerful message given in only seven lines.
One thing I find interesting about this poem is that it is simply untitled. Why is that? Was the author unable to find one that would fit or did they simply believe it didn’t need one? For such a small poem, it holds a lot of power. Maybe that’s why it didn’t need a title to piece it together.
Could it be to keep the YOU universal? Or even the “world” universal? I’m thinking about how our world can be micro, meso, macro. What part of the micro needs to hold together when the meso is a “mess?” How does the macro reach down into our micro as suggested by the Marc Brackett article this week?
Does anyone else see the “stem” of “If/Then” within the poem? How might this serve as a model/help for drafting our own poem around If/Then?
I am feeling that the genre of this poem is more persuasive. It’s saying that you need to let them be there for you. Some people do not want help, they think it will show that they are weak, but we need to accept that everyone has bad days and it is so much better working through it with someone at your side.
One stanza and seven lines. There aren’t any real metaphors, no similes, onomatopoeias, and the only real figure of speech used is alliteration (see lines 3 and 4) and even that feels coincidental. Yet the message is vast. It really opens your eyes to some concepts you may not have thought about before.
I feel as if we read this poem this week because it contributes to the theme of the week. The theme of the week seems to be mental health and awareness of it in our lives. This poem reassures the idea that it is okay to get help when not in the best place. The people in ones life should be there for the good and the bad moments.
I believe that the overarching theme of this poem could be to let others help you. It is such a short poem, which might normally make it difficult to find the theme. Luckily, despite the title not showing anything, the text really helps with the overall focus.
This poem is short, but the words in it really speak to me. I immediately thought about one of my closest friends. One of the worst things happened to her, and I knew I had to share her pain, but also try and take some of it away. Every time she is happy and smiling I have been there making her laugh and sharing joy; when her whole world crashed in one split second, why wouldn’t I be there now? That’s when she needs me the most.
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