Any Poem book recommendations?

I would recommend "Los placeres prohibidos" by Luis Cernuda, a Spanish poet. I'm not going to lie to you, I haven't read it, I've only seen it in class but I'm going to buy it and read it.

It is a book with a surreal technique where the theme of love and eroticism is discussed. It is a book where the author stands against the hostile and destructive reality of the desired ideal. As if love were a force that can handle anything.

Furthermore, Luis Cernuda, like many Spanish poets of the 20th century, was homosexual. I have seen that you are too, so the same helps you connect more with what the author wants to express.

PS: Sorry if I have had mistakes when writing, I am Spanish and very clumsy in English, I use the translator and the little knowledge I have XD

Edit: I don't know if you will find it in libraries in your country but it is not difficult to find it to download it. Luck

i was reading some Robert Frost the other day and found it pretty entertaining. there are a lot of lesser known poems that are just kind of goofy and it's nice to read

My recommendations are: The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, edited by Rita Dove, anything poetry from Anne Carson (eg; If Not, Winter - translations of poems from Sappho), and finally poetry anthologies from the Library of America.

The Penguin Anthology is an enormous and heavy book (599 pages total), so it's definitely something you want to be carrying in a backpack/large bag. However, it contains some excellent poems from the twentieth century by American poets, though nothing by Allen Ginsburg and some other "essential" American poets that the editor notes (and apologizes for) in the introduction.

Anne Carson's poetry books/translations are wonderful and will change the way you read the English language. (probably.) If Not, Winter is a fairly small book which emphasizes the lacunae in Sappho's poetry fragments, and the Autobiography of Red is a narrative in verse. I'm not sure if they're widely available in smaller libraries but I'm pretty sure you can find at least one copy of Carson's poetry in a fairly large library.

For the Library of America poetry anthologies, the new (non-discounted) copies are expensive as hell so if you see one in your local library I recommend checking them out. But they also contain some essential (again, American) poets and their poems across various eras.

I also enjoyed The Penguin Book of Haiku and Contemporary Finnish Poetry translated by Herbert Lomas (published by Bloodaxe Books, not in-print anymore unfortunately and I believe it was only printed in the UK?), I would put a good word in for both books but my post is getting too long.

Apologies for recommending only poetry books mainly from American/European poets - my knowledge is not super in-depth.

I would recommend you "Canto General" or "20 Poemas de Amor y Una Canción Desesperada" by Pablo Neruda, a very famous poet from Chile.

i recommend swinburne’s writing, poems and ballad especially. 

of all poems in there, my favorite is titled the leper. it’s about a scribe who falls in love with a maiden who loves a knight. the maiden falls ill with leprosy, and is sent away from her family, eventually falling into the hands of the scribe, who takes her in his home, taking care of her. eventually, the maiden dies, yet the scribe continues to care for her, two months after she had passed, he faced the same fate.

the poem holds a special place in my heart, though grotesque, i believe more should know about swinburne’s (though taboo) writing.

here is the ballad, i’ve put my favorite stanza in italics. feel free to DM me if you’d want to talk at all!

NOTHING is better, I well think,
    Than love; the hidden well-water
Is not so delicate to drink:
    This was well seen of me and her.

I served her in a royal house;
    I served her wine and curious meat.
For will to kiss between her brows,
    I had no heart to sleep or eat.

Mere scorn God knows she had of me,
    A poor scribe, nowise great or fair,
Who plucked his clerk’s hood back to see
    Her curled-up lips and amorous hair.

I vex my head with thinking this.
    Yea, though God always hated me,
And hates me now that I can kiss
    Her eyes, plait up her hair to see

How she then wore it on the brows,
    Yet am I glad to have her dead
Here in this wretched wattled house
    Where I can kiss her eyes and head.

Nothing is better, I well know,
    Than love; no amber in cold sea
Or gathered berries under snow:
    That is well seen of her and me.

Three thoughts I make my pleasure of:
    First I take heart and think of this:
That knight’s gold hair she chose to love,
    His mouth she had such will to kiss.

Then I remember that sundawn
    I brought him by a privy way
Out at her lattice, and thereon
    What gracious words she found to say.

(Cold rushes for such little feet—
    Both feet could lie into my hand:
A marvel was it of my sweet
    Her upright body could so stand).

‘Sweet friend, God give you thank and grace;
    Now am I clean and whole of shame,
Nor shall men burn me in the face
    For my sweet fault that scandals them.’

I tell you over word by word.
    She, sitting edgewise on her bed,
Holding her feet, said thus. The third,
    A sweeter thing than these, I said.

God, that makes time and ruins it
    And alters not, abiding God,
Changed with disease her body sweet,
    The body of love wherein she abode.

Love is more sweet and comelier
    Than a dove’s throat strained out to sing.
All they spat out and cursed at her
    And cast her forth for a base thing.

They cursed her, seeing how God had wrought
    This curse to plague her, a curse of his.
Fools were they surely, seeing not
    How sweeter than all sweet she is.

He that had held her by the hair,
    With kissing lips blinding her eyes,
Felt her bright bosom, strained and bare,
    Sigh under him, with short mad cries.

Out of her throat and sobbing mouth
    And body broken up with love,
With sweet hot tears his lips were loth
    Her own should taste the savour of,

Yea, he inside whose grasp all night
    Her fervent body leapt or lay,
Stained with sharp kisses red and white,
    Found her a plague to spurn away.

I hid her in this wattled house,
    I served her water and poor bread.
For joy to kiss between her brows
    Time upon time I was nigh dead.

Bread failed; we got but well-water
    And gathered grass with dropping seed.
I had such joy of kissing her,
    I had small care to sleep or feed.

Sometimes when service made me glad
    The sharp tears leapt between my lids,
Falling on her, such joy I had
    To do the service God forbids.

‘I pray you let me be at peace,
    Get hence, make room for me to die.’
She said that: her poor lip would cease,
    Put up to mine, and turn to cry.

I said, ‘Bethink yourself how love
    Fared in us twain, what either did;
Shall I unclothe my soul thereof?
    That I should do this, God forbid.’

Yea, though God hateth us, he know
    That hardly in a little thing
Love faileth of the work it does
    Till it grow ripe for gathering.

Six months, and now my sweet is dead.
    A trouble takes me; I know not
If all were done well, all well said,
    No word or tender deed forgot.

Too sweet, for the least part in her,
    To have shed life out by fragments; yet,
Could the close mouth catch breath and stir,
    I might see something I forget.

Six months, and I still sit and hold
    In two cold palms her two cold feet.
Her hair, half grey half ruined gold,
    Thrills me and burns me in kissing it.

Love bites and stings me through, to see
    Her keen face made of sunken bones.
Her worn-off eyelids madden me,
    That were shot through with purple once.

She said, ‘Be good with me, I grow
    So tired for shame’s sake, I shall die
If you say nothing:’ even so.
    And she is dead now, and shame put by.

Yea, and the scorn she had of me
    In the old time, doubtless vexed her then.
I never should have kissed her. See
    What fools God’s anger makes of men!

She might have loved me a little too,
    Had I been humbler for her sake.
But that new shame could make love new
    She saw not—yet her shame did make.

I took too much upon my love,
    Having for such mean service done
Her beauty and all the ways thereof,
    Her face and all the sweet thereon.

Yea, all this while I tended her,
    I know the old love held fast his part:
I know the old scorn waxed heavier,
    Mixed with sad wonder, in her heart.

It may be all my love went wrong—
    A scribe’s work writ awry and blurred,
Scrawled after the blind evensong—
    Spoilt music with no perfect word.

But surely I would fain have done
    All things the best I could. Perchance
Because I failed, came short of one,
    She kept at heart that other man’s.

I am grown blind with all these things:
    It may be now she hath in sight
Some better knowledge; still there clings
    The old question. Will not God do right?

[you can order it off amazon, there are also many romance poems in there. laus veneris is probably the most.. i’d say erotic?]