A Snake in the Heart is an audacious audio anthology, a CD time capsule of Chicago's spoken word poetry scene when it resituated the role between the page and stage. The Tia Chucha Press disc opens a space between performance and publication, where oral interpretation interfaces with emergent technology, Caedmon recording converges with coffeehouse happening, and "Song of Myself" mingles with Songs In The Key of Life. Fifteen poems are performed by nine local poets with widely divergent forms of musical accompaniment. Despite the spoken word label, this disc is more than a simple litany of voices.