HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Joseph Rodman Drake (August 7, 1795 – September 21, 1820) was an early American poet.


Biography

Born in New York City, he was orphaned when young and entered a mercantile house. While still a child, he showed a talent for writing poems. He was educated at
Columbia College Columbia College may refer to one of several institutions of higher education in North America: Canada * Columbia College (Alberta), in Calgary * Columbia College (British Columbia), a two-year liberal arts institution in Vancouver * Columbia In ...
. In 1813 he began studying in a physician's office. In 1816 he began to practice medicine and in the same year married Sarah, daughter of Henry Eckford, a naval architect. In 1819, together with his friend and fellow poet Fitz-Greene Halleck, he wrote a series of satirical verses for the '' New York Evening Post'', which were published under the penname "The Croakers." Drake died of consumption a year later at the age of twenty-five. As a writer, Drake is considered part of the "
Knickerbocker group The Knickerbocker Group was a somewhat indistinct group of 19th-century American writers. Its most prominent members included Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper and William Cullen Bryant. Each was a pioneer in general literature—novel ...
", which also included Halleck, Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, James Kirke Paulding, Gulian Crommelin Verplanck,
Robert Charles Sands Robert Charles Sands (May 11, 1799 – December 16, 1832) was an American writer and poet. Biography Robert Charles Sands was born in Brooklyn, New York on May 11, 1799, the son of Auditor-General Comfort Sands. He was a scholar and a writer ...
, Lydia M. Child, and Nathaniel Parker Willis. A collection of poems by Joseph Rodman Drake, ''The Culprit Fay and Other Poems'', was published posthumously by his daughter in 1835. His best-known poems are the long title-poem of that collection, and the patriotic "The American Flag" which was set as a
cantata A cantata (; ; literally "sung", past participle feminine singular of the Italian verb ''cantare'', "to sing") is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir. The meaning of ...
for two soloists, choir and orchestra by the Czech composer
Antonín Dvořák Antonín Leopold Dvořák ( ; ; 8 September 1841 – 1 May 1904) was a Czechs, Czech composer. Dvořák frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravian traditional music, Moravia and his native Bohemia, following t ...
in 1892-93. "The Culprit Fay" served as the inspiration for a 1908 orchestral rhapsody of the same name by Henry Kimball Hadley. Fitz-Greene Halleck's poem "Green be the turf above thee" was written as a memorial to Drake. Joseph Rodman Drake Park in Hunts Point, Bronx, a two-and-a-half-acre green space that contains his burial site in a small enclosed cemetery, was named for him in 1915. Buried here as well are members of the old local landowning families, notably the Hunts ("Hunts Point"), Leggetts, and Willets. This park has received $180,000 of New York State funding to memorialize slave workers who were thought to be buried there, and the remains of up to 11 enslaved Africans were rediscovered in 2013-14 by local students from P.S. 48, also known as the Joseph Rodman Drake School.


Critical response

In the early 19th century Americans numbered Drake and his friend Halleck as two of the leading literary personalities and talents produced by their country, but their reputations were short-lived. In April 1836, Edgar Allan Poe published a review of their work–known to Poe scholars as "The Drake-Halleck Review"– in the '' Southern Literary Messenger'' criticizing both, though he thought Drake the better of the two. Poe's essay is as much a critique of the state of criticism at that time, objecting to the fact that "at this particular moment there are no American poems held in so high estimation by our countrymen, as the poems of Drake, and of Halleck." Looking at Drake's ''The Culprit Fay'', a narrative poem of 640 lines, Poe found elements to praise but wrote that "the greater part of it is utterly destitute of any evidence of imagination whatever". He found Drake capable of description, but offered his view that description required little poetic ability and provided his own alternatives to show how simple this writing was. For Drakes' lines: He put his acorn helmet on; It was plumed of the silk of the thistle down: The corslet plate that guarded his breast Was once the wild bee's golden vest; His cloak of a thousand mingled dyes, Was formed of the wings of butterflies; His shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen, Studs of gold on a ground of green;* And the quivering lance which he brandished bright Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight. Poe offered: His blue-bell helmet, we have heard Was plumed with the down of the hummingbird, The corslet on his bosom bold Was once the locust's coat of gold, His cloak, of a thousand mingled hues, Was the velvet violet, wet with dews, His target was, the crescent shell Of the small sea Sidrophel, And a glittering beam from a maiden's eye Was the lance which he proudly wav'd on high. In Poe's view this ability creates "a species of vague wonder at the writer's ingenuity" in most readers, but Poe mocked it as an example of the "sublimely ridiculous" and "puerilities", requiring the reader to "imagine a race of Fairies in the vicinity of West Point".


Works

*''The American Flag'' *''The Culprit Fay: and Other Poems'' (1835)


References


External links

* * *
Joseph Rodman Drake
at Poets' Corner
Joseph Rodman Drake
at Poeticous.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Drake, Joseph Rodman 1795 births 1820 deaths 19th-century American poets American male poets 19th-century deaths from tuberculosis 19th-century American male writers Poets from New York (state) Writers from New York City Columbia College (New York) alumni Knickerbocker Group Tuberculosis deaths in New York (state)