As far as readings/content, I don't know -- I just wanted to mention here that WOMPO was talking a while back about the evolution of readings, lectures, performances and essentially what I ended up with out of the conversation was the ghost of Victorian recitations I hear in Stein and Pound, Amy Lowell's lecture / readings (wasn't she on the chatauqua (sp?) circuit?, Vachel Lindsay's performances (Dylan Thomas, blurring the reading / performance line), the salons in the east village in the teens and 20s, and the balls and parties surrounding the publication of a magazine or fundraising for the publication of a magazine

"poet voice" readings being similar to the Victorian recitations; talk / readings -- or even readings with lots of intro material -- is the intro material marketing; performance; gang bang readings of 5-10 people (and in my experience, out of 5-10 poets, there's somebody who has never timed anything, and thinks 10 minutes is 10 poems); and -- a really lame open mike? being like a salon?