BALTIMORE — 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."
