NYRB has some wonderful “English major pr0n” on Poe here:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/feb/05/edgar-allan-poe/?insrc=hpma
Maybe you should visit the Deer Park Tavern in Newark, Delaware!
Then you’ll be subject to Poe’s Curse, supposedly shouted from the nearby train platform at a small crowd of locals… actually the story leading up to the cursing varies depending on who’s telling it, but the curse is always pretty much the same. The only real variation in the curse itself is that when I was a child it was supposed to apply to the entire town, but after Bob Ashby bought the Deer Park somehow the story changed to be just the DP. I somewhat suspect marketing is responsible for this revisionism…
I miss the original Poe toaster. Hopefully someone will appear to revive that tradition someday.
Nice bottles of wine, but surely the classic drink to celebrate his birthday would be a little drop from The Cask of Amontillado.
I’m not a Poe toaster, however,we could start a new Boing Boing tradition that’s almost as classy:
I’ve got a nice batch of it down in the basement - want some?
Many years ago, when Berkeley’s SF bookstore “Other Change of Hobbit” was in the parking-structure building, there was a bricked-up elevator shaft across the hall from its door, and graffiti on it saying “For the love of God, Montresor!”
According to Wikipedia, the Poe Toaster would bring cognac, but I agree that amontillado would be more fitting.
Great idea, let’s all head to the Yukon so that we can partake of an appropriately scary toast.
I plan on celebrating by frothing at the mouth at biting people on streetcorners.
I could also re-read Rudy Rucker’s Hollow Earth which features Poe.
Requiescat in pace, dear friend.
A Poe-toast toe-post toe-toast? Now we just have to hope the po-po is a no-show.
I really think you’re onto something with the toe-toast. Poe would have liked the idea that a mysterious stranger came back to the bar to get his toe and was never seen again.
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