Erotic Poems is an Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets anthology selected by Peter Washington, gathering erotic verse across centuries, moods, and traditions.

The contents move from Ovid, Hafiz, Horace, Baudelaire, and Bhartrhari through to Robert Graves, Octavio Paz, Thom Gunn, Paul Éluard, Joseph Brodsky, and others — less a novelty book than a compact survey of desire as appetite, wit, longing, embarrassment, worship, theatre, and language having a little too much fun with itself.

This is a handsome little hardback, the erotic here is not just decorative steam on the mirror; it ranges from courtly to comic, devotional to filthy-adjacent, tender to appalled. Good for poetry browsers, gift-givers with taste, and anyone who prefers desire written by people with real sentence-level control.

Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets hardback, 1994. Very good, with light shelf wear to boards/jacket and mild page toning. Ribbon marker intact.