Listening Far and Wee

Had a lovely evening last night listening to a CD from Random House's Voice of the Poet Series. We spent nearly an hour immersed in the voice of e.e. cummings. What a delight! There are 42 poems on the CD which starts off with one of my favorites, "in Just-" What I like best in this poem is the fun use of language, "mud-lucious" and "puddle-wonderful" and the repeated use of "far and wee." You can listen to cummings read it himself in an excerpt from the CD here One of the annoying things I find about listening to poetry being read, however, is that weird poetry reading voice they use--the slow and drawn out intonation. It almost becomes a hypnotic incantation at times. When I read poetry in a book I do not hear it like that. None of my college professors read poetry like that in class. Do the poets hear their poetry like that when they write it? If it is just a performance thing, why? Why not read it in a normal voice? Perhaps I am displaying my ignorance here, and you all are wondering how stupid can a person be? Well, before you ditch me forever as a hopeless case, please enlighten me. Much obliged.