My Name Is New Orleans: 40 Years of Poetry and Other Jazz
My Name Is New Orleans proclaims the striking deep voice over the musical accompaniment. I am a circle of clouds dancing in a hurricane's eye/I am a star, laughing with a Mississippi moon/I am Jean Lafitte and Al Scramuzza/I am memory/I am legacy/I am history. The list rolls on, celebrating the culture of Arthur Pfister's native city. Pfister, aka Professor Arturo, reads his work in a voice that ranges from stately to street smart -- proclaiming, preaching, testifying, celebrating. This is poetry you can dance to, poetry that makes you want to raise your own voice and join in. Pfister has been a fixture on the local poetry scene for decades, issuing a chapbook here and there, composing commissioned poems for special occasions. Now, his work receives the treatment it deserves, with a four-decade retrospective, My Name Is New Orleans: 40 Years of Poetry & Other Jazz (Margaret Media, $19.95), from Mary Gehman's Donaldsonville publishing company. Truth to tell, Pfister's work is exuberant and inclusive; like Walt Whitman, he contains multitudes: the fathers of New Orleans, the mothers of New Orleans, the musicians, your mama'n'em -- all spring to life on the page. And even more so in that gorgeous dramatic voice. --Susan Larson, The Times-Picayune