A CD as Lovely as a Tree 

from The Wall Street Journal
By JOHN JURGENSEN
October 22, 2005; Page P3

The audience listens rapt as Billy Collins recites his poem "Forgetfulness," describing memories that retire "to the Southern hemisphere of the brain."

But the setting isn't a coffee house or college auditorium, it's a bedroom in Oakland, Calif. The audience: David Ichikawa, listening to a recording of the former poet laureate. "It's not like I'm an aficionado, but it's so accessible," says the 48-year-old real-estate agent, who bought extra CDs to give to friends and family. "I don't tell them it's poetry."

Ever wonder how to nail the cadence of Thomas Lux's "Man Pedaling Next to His Bicycle"? Maybe not, but that's not stopping contemporary poets from entering the recording studio, or publishers from recruiting Hollywood actors to recite the verse of dead poets.

"The Voices of Love" and its companion, "The Voices of Marriage," came out in time for Valentine's Day. The "Love" CD features "Breakfast Club" alumna Ally Sheedy doing Emily Dickinson: "Were I with thee, wild nights should be our luxury!" British actor Derek Jacobi recites Byron on "The Romantic Poets," which includes Keats and Shelley. Contemporary scribes like Marjory Wentworth read their own verse on Verb, an audio-literary magazine that launched last month, promising "great writing in a new form."

Of course, not everyone's jumping to their iambic feet. Poetry is at most 5% of the audio-books market by some estimates. Poetry's oral tradition makes it a natural for the growing sector, which has at least $800 million in annual sales and is growing roughly 7% a year, according to the Audio Publishers Association.