[Orwn Acra]

This is tangential to your topic, Maryann, but what makes me want to buy a book, other than its contents, is what the book looks like. I'm 100% serious, too. The covers of so many modern poetry books consist of a random nature/garden sort of picture in a square frame, the title in a pedestrian font, the author's name in the same pedestrian font (a little bit smaller this time), and all backed in that exciting new color: mauve.

Look at the wonderful new editions of Nabokov, Camus, The Wind in the Willows, Kurt Vonnegut, and so on. Look at music (Rhino records released a large anthology of bubblegum music from the 60's in what looks like a hat box). Look at film. They all look great. Assuming that the artist had a say in the aesthetics of the packaging, one can tell that a lot of thought has gone into how to present the thing to the world. I suppose someone can disagree with me and tell me that that sort of stuff shouldn't matter in poetry, but I would suppose that that person is wrong.

But to answer your question, I would be more likely to buy a book if I heard the poet read. Reviews are subjective.