Drake, Joseph Rodman, 1795–1820, American poet and satirist, b. New York City. Under the name “The Croakers,” he and his friend Fitz-Greene Halleck wrote a series of light satirical verses for the New York Evening Post (1819, first complete ed. 1860). Drake's longest serious poem is “The Culprit Fay” (in The Culprit Fay and Other Poems, 1835); his poem “The American Flag” was long a standard patriotic declamation. Halleck's elegy beginning, “Green be the turf above thee,” was written upon Drake's death.
See F. L. Pleadwell, ed., The Life and Works of Joseph Rodman Drake (1935).
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