Fglaysher,
I cannot recommend anything like an official "best practice" to use, but you came close to my recommendation, below.
Instead of using the TOC with an href (anchor) to one spot in a larger html document (which is what you did), I would suggest putting each poem on its own page. Since you are planning to release this as an epub anyway, you might want to take a look at
Sigil which will due exactly what you want. It is simple enough to use and should take about 15 minutes to do everything you want.
Poetry layouts are probably impossible without extensive use of commands / CSS. Even then I'm doubtful of the display / output.