I'm probably going to get slaughtered for saying this but I thought Carla Bruni's 2007 album No Promises, where she put the works of Yeats, Dickinson, WH Auden, Dorothy Parker and others to music, was absolutely fantastic. I think it might have been featured on one of the Word cds when it came out. Can't imagine where else I'd have heard of it.

Much better than you might expect.

settings back in the mid-70s'

on their excellent album "Swagger", the band were a bit of an outlet for frontman Gerard Langley's poems aswell.

As the article says, the Waterboys included Yeats' 'The Stolen Child' back in 1988. As it is my favourite track on the album, I just hope that these new adaptions are just as good. Where it works for me is that the poem is half read, by someone who can read Yeats' poetry, with a carefully chosen stanza acting as the band's chorus. They haven't simply set the poem to a tune, which may not always work.

No contest for worst. The Raven, by Lou Reed. I made it about three quarters of the way through that ordeal before I went insane and gnawed my own ears off.

For. The. Love. Of. God. Montresor.

15 minutes of Coleridge influenced RAWK!!!!

On a more serious note Syd Barrett does a pretty good version of Golden Hair by James Joyce.

"Never Give All The Heart"

This is pretty spine-tingling. Some of the the truest lines about love written - set to a simple backing. Brenda Fricker speaks the lines beautifully - although I can't help feeling it would have made more sense spoken by a man. A Liam Neeson or Stephen Rea say.

that is brilliant. Is it on any CD?

doing Wordsworth's Lucy is rather good:

An Irish compilation from the late '90's I think. Christy Moore, Sinead Lohan, Richard Harris, etc. A bit of a curate's egg.