Why 2009 will be rich with celebrations of Poe

Pick a major East Coast city at random, and you’re likely to find a 200th birthday celebration for Edgar Allan Poe.

The peripatetic Poe -- author of “The Raven,” “The Tell-Tale Heart” and other poems and tales of the macabre -- was born in Boston on Jan. 19, 1809. He was raised largely in Richmond, Va. As an adult, he migrated among Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York.

Befitting his difficulty establishing roots, Poe will be feted at birthday parties in those five cities in January. Events will continue throughout the year -- including new museum exhibits, performances and readings of Poe’s work, academic conferences and, in Baltimore, a reenactment of his funeral that is sure to draw more mourners than the hasty burial itself.

The push to honor Poe dovetails with an escalating debate about the places that were most important to the author’s life and work. Fans of Poe, then, can be forgiven if they feel the need to sit and ponder, weak and weary, where best to pay tribute to the author.

“Every city has its claim to fame with Poe,” said Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum in Baltimore.

Baltimore, where Poe died in 1849 under mysterious circumstances, has his grave and a tiny row house he lived in during his mid-20s. There are also houses in Philadelphia, where Poe wrote some of his best-known stories, and New York, where he enjoyed his greatest literary success. Richmond has the definitive Poe museum. Boston doesn’t have much besides a plaque near his place of birth, but an enthusiastic English professor thinks the city should -- and will -- do more.

For promoting Poe, no city can compete with Baltimore, which named its football team the Ravens in his honor. It also has the Poe birthday tradition that fascinates the public -- each year, a mysterious visitor leaves a half-full bottle of cognac and three red roses at his original grave site.

In 1875, Poe’s remains were moved to a more prominent spot in the same cemetery, Westminster Burying Ground, alongside those of his aunt, Maria Clemm. The remains of his wife, Virginia -- who was also Maria’s daughter -- were reburied there 10 years later.

There Poe’s bones will stay, despite a tongue-in-cheek plea by Philadelphia-based Poe scholar Edward Pettit to dig up the author’s remains and rebury them in the City of Brotherly Love, where he wrote many of his best stories, including “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.”

Pettit’s immodest proposal, first aired in a 2007 article in the Philadelphia City Paper, was the opening salvo in what he calls the “Poe Wars.”

“I’m not crazy. I’ve never thought that the actual body of Poe was going to be moved,” Pettit said. “But that’s the metaphor. Philadelphia deserves the bones of Poe in the sense that it deserves to be the standard-bearer of the Poe legacy.”

Whether Poe’s bones should be moved is open for debate, of course, and on Jan. 13 at the Philadelphia Free Library, Pettit, Jerome and Paul Lewis, an English professor at Boston College, will do just that. Their scholarly showdown is billed as “The Great Poe Debate.”

“I don’t really have to prepare,” Jerome boasted, noting that Baltimore has been the guardian of Poe’s legacy since the 1875 dedication of his new grave, which drew hundreds, including Walt Whitman.

Boston’s claim on Poe is much shakier -- Poe left there when he was a few months old and, as an adult, despised the city and its literary tradition -- but Lewis tries to compensate with rhetorical enthusiasm.

“He is arguably -- I’m not saying everyone would accept this -- the most influential writer who was ever born in Boston, and we should celebrate it,” Lewis said.

New York and Richmond have tried to stay above the fray -- but they’ll take their shots if asked. Their claims are arguably just as strong.

“The work that he did here in New York kind of stands on its own,” said Anthony Green, education director of the Bronx Historical Society, who cited “The Raven,” “The Bells” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” “We can let the other cities squabble about it. To us, it’s not really a competition.”

As for Richmond, Poe described himself as a Virginian and lived there longer than anywhere else. Said Katarina M. Spears, executive director of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum: “We kind of arrogantly feel like it’s only if you’re really insecure about your connection to him that you need to be actively competing.”

Nothing can compete, though, with the mystery and intrigue of the man known only as the “Poe Toaster,” and while his annual birthday tribute isn’t listed among Baltimore’s official bicentennial events, it figures to draw hundreds of people who will try -- unsuccessfully, if history is any guide -- to get a look at him.

Poe’s original grave site can’t be seen from the street, and the toaster always shows up when the cemetery is closed. Jerome will be inside Westminster Hall, the former church adjacent to the cemetery, with a few invited guests. He won’t allow the public or the news media into the building.

Jerome insists he doesn’t know the toaster’s identity and does nothing to aid or abet him. He tries to be respectful of the tribute, and he hopes the crowd that typically gathers outside the cemetery will do the same.

“I’m a nervous wreck,” he said.

There will be plenty of officially sanctioned events in Baltimore and elsewhere. A three-day birthday celebration is scheduled for Westminster Hall. Among the highlights: a tribute to Poe and his work performed by John Astin, best known as Gomez Addams on the 1960s “Addams Family” TV series.

The Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond will be open for 24 hours straight on Poe’s birthday. In Philadelphia, the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site will reopen with new exhibits after a renovation. The Bronx County Historical Society plans to host a party on the grounds of the Poe Cottage in the Bronx, N.Y. And at Boston College, Lewis has arranged for lectures by scholars and a screening of a new feature film inspired by Poe’s life.

In October, Baltimore will mark the 160th anniversary of the author’s death by inviting the public to the Poe House to view a replica of his body. The body will then be taken by horse-drawn carriage to Westminster Hall, giving Poe the proper funeral he never had.