What Love is Like by Piet Hein

What Love is Like

Love is like
a pineapple,
sweet and
undefinable.

-Piet Hein

Can one simple little analogy really be considered a poem? I think so. Still, to write a poem of this length takes extreme attention to detail and an excellent sense of how words work. I don't know much about Piet Hein besides that he was Danish and lives A Long Time Ago, meaning before I was born (he died in 1966). Actually, I kind of like discovering a beautiful poem, looking at the author, and thinking, "who?" That's when a poem can really live and breathe on its own. It has no author we know, so the poem has a unique, separate identity. I like that

About this poem itself: ask someone you know who you're absolutely sure is in love to define it. People tend to give pretty ambiguous answers. "Well, it's not easy..." "You'll know it when you see it." "It took me a while to find it..." No one seems able to just tell you "love is always exactly like this and here is a list I made out with diagrams to make it clear for you." You can't do that. Fortunately, we've all loved someone or been loved at some point in our life, whether it be by a lover, a family member, or a friend. Thank God for that, because without firsthand experience we'd never get it right.

Like short poems? Try your hand at writing some of your own! See this blog post for further info on how you can try your hand at writing short poetry in the form of a haiku.