Time Out From Politics

This amuses me.

Thousands journey far and wide to view Edgar Allan Poe's grave in Baltimore, whose football team is named for his most famous poem. In New York, Philadelphia, and Richmond, Va., droves of devotees visit museums in the itinerant poet's former homes.

Yet in Boston, where Poe was born 200 years ago this January, the master of the macabre is a faintly remembered footnote, all but "nameless here for evermore," as he famously penned in "The Raven." ....

Now a dedicated band of Poe scholars and students at Boston College is hoping to rescue the mysterious writer from "forgotten lore." They have embarked on an earnest, if quixotic, quest to persuade city officials to reclaim Poe as Boston's own and restore the writer, who often dismissed Boston and its literary scene as a provincial "Frogpondium," to its literary fold.

I neither love nor hate Poe's work (actually, I generally either love or hate it, depending on the piece), but if Poe fans will flock to Boston to see where he was born, go for it. Tourism is the Bay State's 3rd largest sector of the economy, so any excuse for an extra stop on the Freedom Trail is a good one. Plus, I like to play up the Mass literary tradition (even if Poe didn't!).