Professor Arturo (AKA Arthur Pfister) returns to the
Stam-ford area tomorrow night as Barnes & Noble’s Open Mic guest reader. As
a poet/fiction writer, spoken work artist, educator, editor and speech-writer, Arturo
draws on decades of plying and living the jazz idiom to relate pieces of justice,
the heart and life crafted with a magnetic conviction.
Originally from New Orleans, he has collaborated on numerous
projects with an amazing array of partners, such as musicians, photographers,
dancers, fire-eaters, waiters, cab drivers and other members of the Great
Miscellaneous.
His work has been placed in Fahari, American Poetry Review, the Shooting Star Review,
EBONY, the Gallery Mirror and
numerous other publica-tions. He has also contributed to the anthologies A Broadside Treasury: 1965-1970 (Broadside
Press, 1971), edited by Gwendolyn Brooks, Orde Coombs’ We Speak as Liberators (Dodd Mead, 1970) and , and
, 2009),
his latest volume, is a multimedia project that comes with a CD of six jazz poetry
readings from the book.
Here is a sampling of the Professor at his most warm and sensual from "Jazz for My Baby":
You’ve changed,
but change makes me wanna hustle for salt peanuts on summer days
For all we
know we’ll be together again bumpin’ on sunset at a freedom jazz dance
Loving you
is like a party
Mercy,
Mercy, Mercy! What a wonderful world!
It’s a
love supreme
a love supreme
a love
supreme…
Below, Arturo is at his galvanizing best in the name of social change at the International Festival
of Arts and Ideas at The Maple Leaf in New
Orleans in 2006, after having to evacuate the city from the devastation of
Hurricane Katrina the year prior:
One of the original Broadside poets of the 1960s, Professor
Arturo took part last August in PoemAlley’s “Café Night” program outside the
Unitarian Universalist Society in Stam-ford. He currently teaches at Norwalk Community
College. Find out more at his blog, professorarturo.blogspot.com.
Hosted by Frank Chambers and
PoemAlley's Nick Miele, the Barnes & Noble's Open Mic Poetry program
meets the second Monday of each month in the cookbook section on the main floor
of the bookstore (located in the Stamford Town Center), beginning at 7:00 p.m.
For more information, contact:
Barnes & Noble
100 Greyrock Place Suite H009
Stamford, CT 06901
203-323-1248
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