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For Sylvia "Sibbie" O'Sullivan of Wheaton, the sound of a poem she is writing comes first – even before ideas and images.

Her CD "Little Wheel" is a collection of 13 poems read by seven different people, including Sullivan herself. The voices vary widely, ranging from soft and confident to folksy to proper to shy. Each reader's voice is well matched to the topic of the poem he or she reads.

Brief musical performances by two artists are inserted between poems, giving it a rich, multidimensional sound and setting the tone for the next piece.

Written words are more permanent than spoken ones, O'Sullivan says, but spoken poetry brings an immediate energy. It also stays true to the tradition of poetry, which began as a spoken art form.

"I made the CD because I wanted the oral quality of my poems to be ever-present," she explains. "There's nothing more intimate than a voice speaking directly to you."

"Little Wheel" is O'Sullivan's only CD of poetry, although many of her poems have been published in literary journals. Some of the works from this collection were presented at the District of Columbia Arts Center in her 1995 performance piece "Voices from the Straw: Poems and Monologues Referencing the Great Witch Hunt."

Her play "The Body" was performed in 2004 at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, where she teaches literature in the Honors program.

O'Sullivan has written fiction, plays and essays, but poetry is her first love. She says it is the genre where the writer has to explain herself least and can rely instead on all aspects of language, including music, rhythm, metaphor, imagery and sound, to convey ideas.

"It can spark different meanings and responses in every reader and every listener," O'Sullivan points out.

Her poems tackle subjects as different as birth, death, love, prostitution, witch hunts and fertility. Written across a number of years, she insists they are nonetheless connected.

"Little Wheel," the title of the central poem, is a metaphor for the force of history, the seasons and the cycles of birth and death, all things that keep moving regardless of human choices, O'Sullivan explains.

"The awfulness, the humanness keeps on churning," she observes.

Some of the poems focus on the same issues people dealt with hundreds of years ago. "Letter from a Roman Wife," in which a woman writes to her husband who is away at war, is both sentimental and current.

O'Sullivan declines to name her favorite piece, observing that the experience of each poem is a combination of her writing and the reader's delivery. The individual listener must determine its value.

"I feel, truthfully, that I'm the weakest reader on this CD," she says.

Amid the often dark selections is "Faith," a touching final poem in which O'Sullivan writes tenderly about a woman kissing her child good night.

"My daughter sleeps / I bend to kiss her cheek / But she is far away. / The kiss, a snowflake melting in the air."

The poem is sweet, but not too sweet, she says, adding,

"I'm dark, but I'm happy, too. I'm a happy dark person."

"Little Wheel" is available at www.sibbieosullivan.com and at www.CDbaby.com.