Night on Neighborhood Street was published by Dial in 1991, with illustrations by Jan Spivey Gilchrist, and presents seventeen poems set on a single evening in a Black urban neighborhood. The poems move from house to house, from porch to playground, capturing different people at different moments: a boy afraid of the dark, a girl practicing piano, a family eating dinner, children playing tag, a woman remembering her dead husband, a drug dealer on the corner.
The collection demonstrates Greenfield’s range within a unified setting. Some poems are playful and rhythmic (“Little Boy Blues,” “Buddy’s Dream”); others are quiet and contemplative (“In the Church,” “Night”); still others acknowledge darker realities — the poem about the drug dealer is honest without being preachy, acknowledging his presence in the neighborhood without either condemning or glamorizing him. The diversity of voices and moods creates a portrait of community that is both celebratory and realistic.
Greenfield’s formal variety is notable: the collection includes rhyming poems, free verse, blues rhythms, and prose poems, each form matched to its subject. The unity comes not from form but from setting — the shared space of the neighborhood street at night, where private lives briefly become visible in the lamplight. Jan Spivey Gilchrist’s watercolor illustrations, rich in blues and purples, capture the particular quality of urban summer darkness — warm, alive, both safe and dangerous.
Collecting Night on Neighborhood Street
First edition (Dial, New York, 1991): Hardcover with dust jacket, illustrations by Jan Spivey Gilchrist.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $20–$50
- Later printings: $5–$10