This blog is about the street names of Saint Paul and how they can have a literary connection even if in a creative manner.  Thanks to the book, The Street Where You Live, by Donald Empson for much of the real background for the street names. Lawrence Ferlinghetti (born 1919), is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers in San Francisco, California. Several years ago he came up with what he called a Modest Proposal to Change the Names of Streets in San Francisco. He was being slightly satirical as evidenced in the reference to the Anglo-Irish satirist, Jonathan Swift (1667 –1745) who made a “Modest Proposal” in 1729  to deal with the problem of children being a burden on their parents. You’ll have to read it yourself. This author modestly suggests that perhaps a literary possibility could be applied for all the streets of Saint Paul. Since “odonymy” is the practice of applying source names to streets, he proposes to be the official  “literary odonymist” for Saint Paul. He hopes the reader finds an interest in the literary odonymy of any number of the streets of Saint Paul.  When the poet, W.H. Auden died, he had been living in Vienna, Austria. The street he lived on had been renamed Audenstrasse  in his honor. It is fitting, then,  to close this Proposal as Auden would say at the end of his poetry readings:  Good words to you.