Thanks for Edith Sitwell, Annie. I'm going to give that a full listen later. It sounds gorgeously eccentric.
Jesse is right. We've had lots of discussions here about poetic songwriters but spoken poetry with musical accompaniment is something different.
I love this idiosyncratic concept album, "Rehearsing My Choir" from the band Fiery Furnaces. I suppose it's a mixture of song and spoken word prose poetry/memoir set to music. I love the voice and the oddness and the hectic tricks it plays with memory and time. I find it moving. It's kind of unclassifiable but here's Wikipedia having a go…
"Released in 2005, it is a concept album featuring Olga Sarantos, grandmother of the band's Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, narrating stories relating to her life. Though the instrumentation is as complex as on the band's previous releases, the vocals mostly take the form of spoken word. At points Eleanor Friedberger speaks or sings words corresponding to the character of a younger Olga Sarantos, the two engaging in dialogue. This aspect has made many draw relations between the album and a radio play. Olga Sarantos died on December 31, 2007"
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OL...2uFvLbz eD6Sw