We can’t sing it either, but we love to shout the “OHHHHHHHHHH” at baseball games, in celebration of our beloved Orioles. Which is odd because a ru Baltimorean, one who speaks in the local accent known as Bawlmerese, refers to the team as the Erioles, as surely as he calls a blaze a “far” and “warshes dishes in the zink.” (Baltimore joke: Why were the three wise men covered with ashes when they came to visit the Baby Jesus? Because they came from a far. Guess you had to be there. Correction: Guess you have to be here)

Edgar Allan Poe lived here, got a boost to his literary ambitions by winning a prize here, and, far more famously, died here, creating twin mysteries-the truth of what happened to him in October 1849, and the identity of the “Poe Toaster,” who visits the original Poe gravesite on the writer’s birthday, January 19, leaving behind three red roses and a half-bottle of cognac.

John Dos Passos passed time on the North Side, as did Gertrude Stein. (With Alice B. Toklas, of course.) Ogden Nash punned and rhymed here. Dorothy Parker’s ashes were kept in a file drawer here, but only because Baltimore is the national headquarters of the NAACP, which was willed her remains.

H.L. Mencken avowed that he knew of no better place to live. Across Union Square from Mencken’s house, a boy named Russell Baker grew up. On nearby Stricker Street, Dashiell Hammett lived for a while as well, a trifecta of talent that should put Southwest Baltimore on any map of literary landmarks.

As for Baltimore’s noir pedigree-it was here that Hammett worked as a Pinkerton agent, reporting to an office in the Continental building, a downtown high-rise that happened to feature a decorative motif of carved falcons. Painted gold now, but thought to be black in Hammett’s time. Am I claiming that the Maltese Falcon was born here? Prove that it wasn’t.

Today, Baltimore is home to award-winning writers such as Anne Tyler, Madison Smartt Bell, Stephen Dixon, and Taylor Branch.