February. Again. If you break out in a cold sweat at the thought of giving – or receiving – another copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam this Valentine's Day, consider one of these titles for that special someone, even if that special someone is yourself.

Something old, something new. 

For some of the most gorgeous love poetry of all time, there are any number of collections of Shakespeare's sonnets. These poems are inventive, playful explorations of passion, longing, identity and loss, "often," as Helen Vendler has written, "in blasphemous or subversive ways." There is so much more to these sonnets than meets the eye, Dr. Vendler's insights into their poetics are more than useful: they are indispensable. If you buy her The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets (Belknap Press), don't scrimp. Go for the hardcover edition ($35), which includes a CD recording of Dr. Vendler's insightful readings of 65 of the poems.

Another new take on transcendant and ancient verse is Craig Glickman's Solomon's Song of Love (Howard Publishing Co., $18.99). Dr. Glickman (a Dallasite and a former student of mine) provides his own translation of the "Song of Songs," as well as a critical guide to its design and an exploration of its continuing relevance and appeal to modern readers.

High stakes, big states. 

This past year, Alaska's much prized and frequently honored Olena Kalytiak Davis published her second collection, Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities (Bloomsbury, $19.95). The emotions in this book are raw, as she manages to transform everyday, conversational speech into the poetic equivalent of Bruce Springsteen's "freight train runnin' through the middle of my head."

Closer to home, Paul Ruffin (director of Texas Review Press) has given us The Book of Boys and Girls (Louisiana Literature Press, $8). This volume is hard to find, but worth the effort. His poems are audacious and funny and full of wordplay that surprises and delights.

I would be remiss not to mention Maine's Edna St. Vincent Millay, who has been rediscovered in recent years. The Modern Library's Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay ($16.95), with a fine introduction by Nancy Mitford, includes Jazz Age ballads and sonnets that are as fresh (read: "saucy, insolent, flip and defiant") today as when they were written.

Last year's Collected Poems – Ted Hughes (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, $50) includes all of his posthumously published Birthday Letters (FS&G, $12, paper), his only direct response to the poetry of his first wife, Sylvia Plath. Thanks in part to its Pulitzer Prize, Plath's Collected Poems (Harper Perennial, $17.95, paper) – edited, annotated, and introduced by Hughes – is still in print. Combined with Birthday Letters, readers get a powerful picture of the stormy whirlwind of a relationship. Not for the faint of heart.

Poetry with training wheels.

Roger Housden followed up his successful Ten Poems to Change Your Life with last year's Ten Poems to Open Your Heart (Harmony Books, $15). Publisher's Weekly called this "a slim volume best enjoyed by people who don't ordinarily read poetry," also known as "the vast majority of the reading public." Mr. Housden's commentaries may seem a bit Oprah-ish, but you can't fault his selections, which include poems by Mary Oliver; Galway Kinnell; Nobelists Wislawa Szymborska, Pablo Neruda and Czeslaw Milosz; and Texas' own Naomi Shihab Nye.

Distant lands, inner voices

Mr. Housden's collection ends with a poem by the Sufi master Rumi, a 13th-century writer and 21st-century publishing phenomenon. The 14th-century Persian Sufist, Hafiz, appears in glorious translation in Daniel Landinksy's The Subject Tonight Is Love (Penguin Compass, $12, paper).

My top recommendation in this category (and perhaps all of today's categories) is Oriental Love Poems by Michelle Lovric (Andrews McMeel Publishing, $14.95). This physically stunning book, which combines Chinese and Japanese poetry with origami interpretations, is as much fun to hold as to behold.

Tom Mayo teaches "Law, Literature & Medicine" at Southern Methodist University and at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas