In a short drive around Ann Arbor you can see no fewer than 10 home sites where noted poets and authors resided.

With a stop at the Fairview Cemetery, the curious can find the inconspicuous grave of poet Robert Hayden

who was raised in Detroit, later lived at 1201 Gardner Street in Ann Arbor and he taught at the University of Michigan in the 1970s.

Americans admire Hayden's widely anthologized poem about his father, "Those Winter Sundays," and his powerful poem about the slave trade, "Middle Passage." A Hopwood Award recipient, Hayden's most notable tenure was as a consultant in poetry to the U.S. Library of Congress, later changed to poet laureate. He was the first African-Amercan to hold the post.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that poet Robert Frost had lived in Ann Arbor, on two separate occasions. And later, acclaimed playwright and U-M alumnus Arthur Miller rented an upstairs apartment at 411 N. State Street when he entered the University in 1934.

A great, world-class university, like the U-M, has a solid foundation of academic excellence built by distinguished students, faculty and administrators. Today, where First Presbyterian Church sits stately in a peaceful wooded setting at 1432 Washtenaw Avenue., Issac Newton Demmon, a mathematics, and later, history professor at Michigan for 45 years, lived in what a peer called one of the town's "picturesque, pleasant and cultivated homes,"

Frost, during one of his residencies in Ann Arbor, was the guest of Demmon and, tragically, in the same year, Demmon passed away.

A summary of professor Demmon's illustrious career in the Michigan Alumnus magazine ran nine pages. His colleagues noted that his death "crowned a life of incessant labor, and enriched by such a depth of experience as few men, and only big men, can know."

I was surprised to learn about the former residence of author Betty Smith (see photo) at 1314 Broadway St., whose published works include "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."

In the 1940s, Harriett Simpson Arnow, the author of the widely read novel "The Doll Maker," moved with her husband, a former journalist with the defunct Detroit Times newspaper, to a comfortable home in Ann Arbor Township. Other Ann Arbor notable resident-writers include poet in residence Jane Kenyon, 2896 Newport Road; and Joseph Brodsky , a Russian-American poet, essayist, and Nobel Laureate in Literature, who lived at 309 Wesley Street.

It has been said that well-known people in the arts and politics prefer to reside in Ann Arbor because the residents respect their privacy. Robert Hayden, however, was an outgoing, familiar bus passenger in town. He would ride the bus from campus (State and William Streets) to Packard Road and Gardner Street, just a few steps from his home.

Dale Leslie is proud that his hometown is a comfortable place for notables to visit and resaide. While their creativity earns them fame, the public attention becomes a mixed bag at their door-step. For them, Ann Arbor's unique Quality of Life and the privacy it provides are a welcome respite.