Let’s say you have a girlfriend. The best girlfriend. She could be Scarlet Johansson’s stunt double, she’s not naggy or overly emotional or annoying, and when you ask where she wants to go for dinner, she never does that thing where she turns down every suggestion you make while still demanding that you pick the restaurant. She probably smells good too. So how do you let her know she’s appreciated? There’s always flowers or gifts or just straight up telling her, but where’s the sentiment in that?
I’d suggest writing a poem. As indicated by the mental cringe that undoubtedly just caused you to throw the paper down in embarrassment, writing a love poem for someone can be a horribly stupid thing to do. However, as someone who’s written more than a few successful love poems, I believe I can walk anyone through the process of writing a poem for any girl.
Before you even sit down at the computer, you have to throw out any preconceived notions you might have about love poems. We’re one of the snarkiest generations to ever inhabit the planet. Unless you want to wind up becoming an Internet meme, ditch the Shakespeare stuff. On top of the fact that you’ll sound like a moron, would whipping out a line like “and all that’s best of dark and bright meet in the aspects of her eyes” even sound sincere? Nobody talks like that. Can you really say that you’re baring your soul when you don’t even have a firm idea of what you’re saying? Even worse, you probably won’t have the mastery of that kind of awful, gag-worthy language to make anyone feel anything but nausea from it.
Now that you’ve hopefully been scared away from trying to write like somebody who drinks more than five varieties of tea and wears a cravat on a weekly basis, you’ve got to know your audience. Is your girl the kind that makes a joke out of everything? Then shoot for a combination of endearing and ironic. If she’s the kind that lives for cute little pet names and romantic evenings and Eskimo kisses, you have my permission to go full cheese. She’ll eat it up. The point is though, the best advice I can give you on choosing the actual content of the poem is to really think about what your girl wants before you write it. Don’t just sit down and try to think of a clever way to tell her that her eyes are bluer than the toilet water after you drop one of those cleaner things in it. Try to create something that would make her say, “I wish a guy would talk to me like that” if it hadn’t been written about her. Before you start, you might want to watch a few of her favorite romantic movies, or if she’s a dork, read through some of her favorite romance novels. Don’t try to steal lines from them or anything, just try and get the general feeling of it. I’ve read the entirety of “Gone with the Wind” just for this purpose, and I can honestly say that the results were worth it.
Once you start writing, you’ve also got to remember to balance out your compliment to sentiment ratio. Some girls are extremely proud of the way that they look and relish in those moments when you shower them with compliments. If she’d rather hear about how you get weak in the knees every time she flips her hair than how much you enjoy the riveting conversations you have together, go high on the compliments side. For girls who put a lot of stock in how important they are to you on an emotional or intellectual level though, your compliment to sentiment ratio ought to be 50/50, if you choose not to lean more to the sentimental side. Every girl likes to feel pretty, but you don’t want to make her feel like a piece of meat. On the other extreme side of this spectrum, if your girl isn’t all that good looking and is aware of that fact, a poem that’s nothing but compliments will just seem insincere. Find your balance and tell the recipient of your poem the whole truth of why she’s special to you.
As far as the technical side of the poem is concerned, AA BB rhyme scheme is fine. There’s no need to try and get too fancy if you aren’t comfortable with that. On a similar note, it absolutely has to rhyme. A non-rhyming poem is just a bunch of weirdly spaced out words. Until you’re the poet laureate of Scotland, you aren’t good enough to give somebody a poem that doesn’t rhyme. It’s just a rule.
Another suggestion on the technical side would be to make it sound like a modern love song. I’m definitely not saying that you should sing it. What I’m saying is that if your meter is off, it doesn’t matter as long as it sounds good when you say it. You can make a line a few syllables too long as long as nobody can tell when you read it out loud. “When I Was Your Man” is a great song to draw inspiration from, here. Not necessarily the sentiment behind it, but the rhythm and the flow and the rhyme scheme of it. The way it feels on a technical level. The casual feel that goes along with writing something that reads like the lyrics of a modern love song will keep the moment that you read it to her from getting too heavy.
That’s another thing. Don’t be a pansy and just tie your poem to a vase full of flowers or something and let her read it whenever she gets it. Read it to her. There’s no surer sign of a real man than somebody who can look a girl in the eyes and read her a love poem without his hands shaking. Delivery is everything. Reading a poem to a girl can be an incredibly intimate moment that’ll have her melting in your arms if you do it right.
Writing a love poem for someone can transform you from common bro-dude to a rugged man who’s secretly sensitive at heart. I’d recommend it to anyone, no matter the relationship. If you’ve never done it for the special girl in your life, you’ve got a day to man up and break out the big guns for Valentine’s Day. If you follow the advice above, you won’t regret it.
