Editing Joseph Rodman Drake

{{short description|American poet}}
[[File:JosephRodmanDrake.jpg|thumb|right|Joseph Rodman Drake]]
'''Joseph Rodman Drake''' (August 7, 1795 – September 21, 1820) was an early [[United States|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 of Columbia University|Columbia College]]. 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 (shipbuilder)|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 Post|New York Evening Post]]'', which were published under the penname "The Croakers." Drake died of [[tuberculosis|consumption]] a year later at the age of twenty-five.

As a writer, Drake is considered part of the "[[The Knickerbocker|Knickerbocker group]]", which also included Halleck, [[Washington Irving]], [[William Cullen Bryant]], [[James Kirke Paulding]], [[Gulian Crommelin Verplanck]], [[Robert Charles Sands]], [[Lydia M. Child]], and [[Nathaniel Parker Willis]].<ref>Nelson, Randy F. ''The Almanac of American Letters''. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 30. {{ISBN|0-86576-008-X}}</ref> 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]] for two soloists, choir and orchestra by the Czech composer [[Antonín Dvořák]] in 1892-93.<ref>{{cite web|title=The American Flag|url=http://www.antonin-dvorak.cz/en/american-flag|publisher=The Dvorak Society for Czech and Slovak Music|access-date=May 4, 2015}}</ref>  "The Culprit Fay" served as the inspiration for a 1908 orchestral rhapsody of the same name by [[Henry Kimball Hadley]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=8.559064&catNum=559064&filetype=About%20this%20Recording&language=English|title=HADLEY: Symphony No. 4 / The Ocean / The Culprit Fay|access-date=3 April 2016|archive-date=17 April 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160417021520/http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=8.559064&catNum=559064&filetype=About%20this%20Recording&language=English|url-status=dead}}</ref>

[[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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/X015/highlights|title=Joseph Rodman Drake Park|access-date=3 April 2016}}</ref> 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,<ref>Bob Kappstatter, "State $ for slave burial site." Bronx Times Reporter, May 16th, 2014, p. 6.</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite web |url= https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/25/nyregion/south-bronx-students-may-have-found-site-of-slave-burial-ground.html |title= South Bronx Students May Have Found Site of Slave Burial Ground |website=The New York Times |last=Foderaro |first=Lisa W. |date=25 January 2014 |access-date=28 May 2020}}</ref>

== 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.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Frank|first1=Frederick S.|title=The Poe Encyclopedia|date=1997|publisher=Greenwood Press|location=Westport, Connecticut|page=17|isbn=9780313277689|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TevIJKwqWPMC&pg=PA17|access-date=May 4, 2015}}</ref> 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:
<poem>
        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.</poem>

Poe offered:
<poem>
        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.</poem>

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]]".<ref>{{cite web|first1=Edgar Allan|last1=Poe |title=The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems, Joseph Rodman Drake, Alnwick Castle, and Other Poems, Fitz-Greene Halleck|url=http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/poe/drake_halleck.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20001209080400/http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/poe/drake_halleck.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=December 9, 2000|website=University of Virginia American Studies|access-date=May 4, 2015}}</ref>

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

==References==
{{Reflist}}

== External links ==
{{wikisourceauthor}}
{{wikiquote}}
* {{Gutenberg author |id=177| name=Joseph Rodman Drake}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Joseph Rodman Drake |sopt=t}}
* {{Librivox author |id=6116}}
* [http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/drake04.html Joseph Rodman Drake] at Poets' Corner
* [https://www.poeticous.com/joseph-rodman-drake Joseph Rodman Drake] at Poeticous.com

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Drake, Joseph Rodman}}
[[Category:1795 births]]
[[Category:1820 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century American poets]]
[[Category:American male poets]]
[[Category:19th-century deaths from tuberculosis]]
[[Category:19th-century American male writers]]
[[Category:Poets from New York City]]
[[Category:Columbia College (New York) alumni]]
[[Category:Knickerbocker Group]]
[[Category:Tuberculosis deaths in New York (state)]]