New Streets in the New American City

 

Have you seen the news?

The Howard Hughes Corporation has announced the names of three new streets for the Lakefront neighborhood, referred to as Lakefront North, in Downtown Columbia. The names are inspired by the work of the late Lucille Clifton, who was Maryland Poet Laureate from 1979-1985 and a Columbia resident.

Lucille Clifton, photo credit Mark Lennihan/AP

The announcement was made at an event last week at The 3rd, which I was sadly unable to attend. (Really. I had an actual prior commitment - - rare, I know.) The new streets names will be: Rustling Sky Way, Singing Stone Terrace and Distant Star Lane, which come from Clifton’s poetry. They certainly have that authentic Columbia street name feel, don’t they? I do hope no one ever gets lost looking for Rustling Sky and ends up on Rustling Leaf. 

If they do if will be the most Columbia thing ever.

I have a confession to make. I was not aware that Lucille Clifton was a poet. As a teacher of young children, this is the Lucille Clifton I know: 

The Everett Anderson series, featured on the Fantastic Fiction website

Clifton wrote a series of children’s books about a little boy named Everett Anderson. These books, the first of which was published in 1970, were some of the first picture books I read that did not center around white people. The characters were authentically Black, not just white people with white facial features that had been painted over in various shades of brown and tan. There were enough of those sorts of books that encountering Everett Anderson and his world was a revelation.

Cover of Everett Anderson’s 1*2*3, 1977

“Mom wrote children’s books to fill an obvious void,” wrote her daughters Sidney, Gillian and Alexia Clifton. “Prior to the publishing of Some of the Days of Everett Anderson, there were very few children’s books depicting the lives of black and other children of color.  And of those few; even fewer were written by black or ethnic authors. Creating characters whose lives, language and experience were a mirror to the lives, languages and experiences of thousands of underserved children across the country was important to her, and her pioneering contributions lit the way for the many prolific authors and illustrators of color whose works endure in the marketplace today.” - - from a piece on Lucille Clifton by Kelly Starling Lyons on The Brown Bookshelf website 

Now that I know that Clifton was also a poet - - better late than never - - I have the joy of all that reading reading ahead of me. The Howard County Library System is a good place to start.  In addition, the book Generations, A Memoir, first published in 1976, is a part of the Equity Resource Center collection at Central Branch. Generations, re-released in 2021, is the only other narrative prose work by Clifton aside from her children books. It traces the story of her family back through time, all the way to the Dahomey women of Africa.

I was interested to find this reference to a A Tribute to Lucille Clifton by the (Columbia local)  Little Patuxent Review. The event took place at the 2012 Baltimore Book Festival and was a part of the 100 Thousand Poets for Change initiative.  One fun thing about the above-mentioned link is that includes a video clip of Clifton reading one of her own poems.

I learned from this piece on Ellicott City Patch that:

Clifton first visited Columbia in 1974 for the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society’s (HoCoPoLitSo) inaugural reading, and continued appearing for the society over the years, eventually moving to Columbia in 1991. - - Jean Moon, “ Lakefront Neighborhood Street Names Inspired by Poet Lucille Clifton” for Ellicott City Patch

You’ll also want to take a look at Moon’s piece to learn more about the re-development of what Howard Hughes folks are calling Lakefront North. I’m rather amazed at what they are planning for an area which is now a surface parking lot. Is it possible to take a parking lot and turn it into paradise? We shall see. 

If they do, I just might write a song about it. Or maybe a poem.