author
Joseph Rodman Drake
1795–1820
An early American poet with a gift for vivid, musical verse, he left a lasting mark on U.S. literature despite dying at just twenty-five. He is best remembered for poems like The Culprit Fay and The American Flag, along with the lively satirical pieces he wrote with Fitz-Greene Halleck.
1 Audiobook
The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems
by Joseph Rodman Drake
About the author
Born in New York City in 1795, Joseph Rodman Drake showed literary promise early. After losing his father when he was young, he was raised by relatives in New York, later studied at Columbia, and also trained in medicine.
His reputation rests on a small but memorable body of work. The Culprit Fay helped bring a distinctly American setting and imagination into poetry, while The American Flag became one of his best-known patriotic poems. He also wrote a series of witty satirical verses with his friend Fitz-Greene Halleck under the name "The Croakers."
Drake died in New York in 1820, only twenty-five years old, and his early death gave his career a sense of promise cut short. Even so, he has continued to be remembered as one of the young voices who helped shape the beginnings of an American literary tradition.