My Name Is New Orleans: 40 Years of Poetry and Other Jazz

This is the collected life's work of New Orleans jazz poet Arthur Pfister who performs under the name Professor Arturo. The book includes an audio-CD (Merrittorious Action, ISBN 9780982455104), in which Pfister reads 6 poems from the book. An original Broadside Press Poet of the 1960s, the Professor was a fixture in the N.O. poetry scene until 2005 when Hurricane Katrina sent him into permanent evacuation to Stamford, CT. The poems in this book reflect a lifetime immersed in the humor, pathos and idiosyncracies of New Orleans. Pfister's colorful work has appeared in countless above and underground publications -- this is the first time it comes together in one dynamite volume. Amiri Baraka says, 'Arthur Pfister is one of the finest poets in the new world and the old one too.' John Sinclair says, 'The appearance of [Pfister's] collected work is an important occasion that will rescue his brilliant works in verse from poetry oblivion and put them in our hands (and ears) where they belong.'