2 scholars fight over Poe's dead body

Sometimes you can't leave something dead and buried.

That was apparent in many of Edgar Allan Poe's stories, and it now seems to be true in an ongoing debate over the author's remains.

Last October, local writer Edward Pettit began arguing that Poe's body should be moved from Baltimore to Philadelphia. Pettit and Jeff Jerome, who runs the Poe House in Baltimore, will square off in a debate at the Philadelphia Free Library on Jan. 13 to commemorate the bicentennial of Poe's birth.

Poe was born in Boston and grew up in Virginia, but wrote some of his most regarded works in New York and Philadelphia. He died in Baltimore, which now claims his body.

While no city ever embraced Poe, he found the most success in Philadelphia.

"When Poe came to Philadelphia, his creative genius blossomed," Pettit said. "He wrote some of his best works here. They're the works we remember him by."

Pettit attributes Poe classics like "The Tell Tale Heart" to Philadelphia's urban squalor.

"Environment does a lot to shape a writer's vision," he said, adding that "some of the rougher things about Philadelphia" likely inspired Poe.

Pettit argues that Poe was marginalized in Baltimore - he was buried without a headstone.

But Baltimore embraced Poe posthumously and has worked to preserve his legacy.

Jerome, who did not return a request for an interview, has argued that Poe decided to focus on writing horror after living in Baltimore.

Other Philadelphia literary scholars are less enthusiastic to join the debate.

"With so many important dilemmas facing Philadelphia and the nation, this debate seems to me to be a colossal waste of argumentative breath," St. Joseph's University English professor Richard Fusco wrote in an e-mail.

Fusco also grew up in Philadelphia, but said "the notion of transporting Poe's bones to a Philadelphia site strikes me as disrespectful."

Even though Pettit maintains his argument and has spoken of moving Poe's remains to Philadelphia, he doesn't expect that to happen.

"I'm not crazy," he said. "I don't expect his bones to be moved, but I think the conversation is really important because of how important he is as an American writer."

Still, some scholars fail to find the intellectual value of the debate.

Liliane Weissberg, a professor of Comparative Liberature at Penn, says the debate is just a public-relations creation.

"The idea of moving Poe is pretty absurd," she said. "Why does an author have to be associated with one particular place?"

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