AUDIOCASSETTES : Excellent Good Fair Poor

“The Poet Speaks.” Newman/Argo. It’s our good luck that spoken-word recordings of the ‘40s and ‘50s captured poets like T. S. Eliot, Robert Graves and W. H. Auden giving unmatchable readings of their own works. Those three writers and eight others--including Ted Hughes, Stevie Smith and C. Day Lewis--are represented in this incredible 92-minute, $8.95 collection. From the whimsy of Eliot (four of the verses that inspired the musical “Cats”) to Sylvia Plath’s pointedly acidic tone, this tape is always interesting--even when merely showing Stephen Spender to be as dry a reader as a poet--and often revelatory.