Second person point of view works in Milk and Honey because the reader gets the sense Kaur is speaking directly to them. By saying “you” Kaur elicits the longing for a lost love, stubborn refusal to move on, and despair of a break up in the reader. The poem about the coffee cup would not hit the reader as hard if Kaur had used “I” or “she” because then the longing would belong to someone else, not the reader. While she uses first and third person points of view too, the second person poems pull the reader in, transforming them into the body experiencing the sensations and emotions Kaur focuses on. One of the techniques Kaur uses to evoke an emotional response from her readers is the use of second person point of view. She makes the intangible tangible in the cup of black coffee. By coupling the emotion with a familiar item, Kaur gives the reader a taste, smell, heat, and image to associate with the emotions she invokes. They feel love, agonizing want, loneliness, stubbornness, and fear – all wrapped in a handful of poignant phrases. The reader sees Kaur’s longing in the lines where the speaker refuses to let go. Kaur’s poems have the ability to gut her readers because she allows the full force of her emotions into each poem. Because poetry is designed to share what the writer was feeling in a specific moment, it is often autobiographical. Whether the feeling is happy, sad, thrilling, or calming, the sensation is one readers desire.

When readers return to a text again and again, it’s because that text makes them feel something. Poets are masters of evoking emotion in as few words as possible.

Milk and honey love poems