Poetry of Place

New Orleans is an unusual city.  It lies along a river, lake and the Gulf of Mexico. 

This has meant it is a rich estaurine area: fish, seafood of all kinds abound.  It is also a port city-- a crossroads, and oddly, at the end of the line of one of the largest rivers in the world: a watershed for more than a third of the United States. 

People are drawn to the cultures here.  It is the most Africanized city in the United States because of the legacy of slavery.  It has been in the hands of the French, Spanish, briefly the British, and finally the Americans. 

Sugar, cotton and commerce made the city, as well as religion. 

What is the importance of this place to poets and other writers and artists who are natives and who choose to live here?  IS it a singular place?  Or is it too many places to enumerate? 

What does the city and region offer people who live, work and raise families here?  What is this urban landscape like? We've suffered many hurricanes, much corruption that's damaged the town. To read the papers, it is a hotbed of crime and misery.  Is this all that there is to New Orleans?  Bourbon Street, storms, crime and poverty? 

Whose eyes see this place as it is; its value?

What gifts or problems can be celebrated and bemoaned through the poetry of this place?