Talk:Joseph Rodman Drake

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Notability[edit]

Perhaps this article has been mostly written by Drake fans. Nevertheless, I think that the only reason that Drake is at all notable is that Poe wrote a withering critique of his poem "The Culprit Fay" in an article normally referred to by Poe scholars as "The Drake-Halleck Review". Having just wasted half an hour of my life reading Drake's poetry on Project Gutenberg, I think the article needs to be tempered by the recognition that one of America's undoubtedly major writers took time out to note that Drake was a very, very minor writer. I'll do it myself if nobody else does. (Today happens to be Poe's birthday and it would be a shame if his work in writing one of the funniest and most brutal bad reviews ever written were lost, simply because nobody can be bothered to point out that Poe recognised that Drake's poetry sucks.)

In short, I argue that without the fact of the Drake-Halleck Review, Drake fails WP:notability. Lexo (talk) 23:35, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Far be it for me to suggest that Drake's poetry doesn't "suck" or to disagree with Poe. But there are reasons to keep the article since his notability was high during his short life, a park in the Bronx NY is named after him, his association with Halleck who was not an awfully good poet either but who has a statue in New York's Central Park and was also influential during his lifetime. His connection to the Rockefeller family and, last but not least, his poem "The American Flag" was set by Dvorak, the major Czech composer.Ed (talk) 23:13, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Drake's poetry doesn't "Suck" any more than most early 19th C. American poetry does. Poe was an especially harsh critic- if he disliked something he delighted to heap ridicule and pour acidic scorn upon it. Poe has come to be regarded as a great American writer but he himself wrote quite a bit of trash, both poetry and prose. For my own part I suspect that Poe's opinions were touched by jealousy: Drake had been dead for decades and was still more successful than Poe ever was;Saxophobia (talk) 18:46, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]