I have a Mac, so my only option was to try Project Gutenberg. I couldn't find any information on the homepage, or under FAQ, as to what formats would be available, so I decided to pick the book/file first, and then see if I'd be able to download it. Audio books are an absolutely perfect medium for poetry, so I chose Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Apple iTunes Audiobook was one of the formats available, so at first it seemed that this exercise was moving along quite nicely. I was really looking forward to hearing the poems. Unfortunately, trying to download the book turned out ot be a rather frustrating experience. The Main Project Gutenberg site delivered a useless text file, and a listed mirror site (knowledgerush.com) doesn't even offer audio files. I was finally successful downloading from Seattle's "Project Gutenberg Reading Room," but soon noticed that instead of the whole book, my download only contained the editor's notes. I realized that I had to download every chapter separately. The editor's notes were followed in the second download by the author's preface; the third file, believe it or not, offered the editor's notes to the author's preface! The forth download finally brought me to Part 1, poem 1-4. Awkward.
Meanwhile I had discovered that MP3 worked faster and more reliably than Apple iTunes Audiobook. The files on Gutenberg greatly vary in length and quality, and I kept hitting the odd ones. Ezra Pound's Cathay disappointingly was only one poem from Cathay, and Winnetou I by Karl May (in German) started with chapter 6! It's fun to browse, to listen to Basho in Japanese, Pushkin in Russian, but unfortunately the collection seems very inconsistent.
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