McDonald Clarke

McDonald Clarke Poems

McDonald Clarke Biography

McDonald Clarke (1798–1842) was a poet of some fame in New York City in the early part of the 19th century. He was an influence on, and eulogized by Walt Whitman; but widely known as "the mad poet of Broadway", a label with which he identified. He is, arguably, an early example of an outsider artist. McDonald Clarke was born in Bath, Maine on June 18, 1798, apparently the illegitimate son of a ship-merchant. His mother, by his account, died at sea when he was 12; but little is known of his early life beyond the fact that he and the poet Brainard were playmates. He resided in Philadelphia for a time, reportedly sleeping in the grave-yard at Franklin's monument. By 1819 he had moved to New York city where he sought to establish himself as a journalist and poet, but scraped by in varying degrees of poverty. Penniless, he eloped with and married an actor, a Miss Brundage, greatly against the wishes of her mother. The marriage faltered, seemingly largely because of his inability to earn a living or keep lodgings, and quickly ended in divorce. He became a familiar and striking figure on Broadway, and well known as an eccentric character. Clarke was an imitator of Byron and copied his airs and costumes, but not – as the New York Times archly put it – his verses. Higgins suggests he embraced the mad poet role, in part as a means of entry into New York literary circles, and "clearly relished his role as jester"; but later downplayed the role. Although he managed to produce work throughout his life, his mental health was fragile and failing. His character was described as "innocent as a child", imbued with a mystic romanticism, and by common consent, he had no vices, but always preserved a gentility of deportment, was inoffensive, and always mild, always happy. He was a regular attendant at the fashionable Episcopal Grace church on Broadway. His oddities, as his friend Fitz-Greene Halleck stated, were all amiable. Nevertheless after the breakdown of his marriage his behavior became wilder and could give rise to alarm, particularly when he became fixated on and followed young women around the city. "His whole life was in fact a restless seeking for other half", according to biographer L. Maria Child. In the early part of his career he subsisted, barely, on the proceeds of his published books. Later he relied on the sale of poems to newspapers, journals and magazines, but was rarely able to keep a roof over his head, and in in a letter to the New York Evening Post was described as "a poetic scintillator of some what odd fancies, who kept the town laughing while he was sometimes starving." He is described as often being reduced to sleeping between two graves in Trinity churchyard, and surviving on crackers and milk. He drowned on 5 March, 1842 in a cell of the city prison by water from an open faucet. A policeman had found him in a destitute and apparently demented condition on the street and taken him to a jail for safety; but this triggered a mental collapse which saw him removed to an asylum. The immediate catalyst for the mental chain of incidents which brought about his death was the culmination of a cruel prank played on him by a group of youths, who elaborately convinced him that a certain woman for whom he longed was in love with him, before letting him down in the most abrupt fashion. He was celebrated in life in an amusing poem called "The Discarded," written by Halleck, but it was upon Walt Whitman that he made the greatest impression. He penned a lengthy eulogy for Clarke in the Aurora, another article four days later praising him, and on March 16 published a poem, The Death and Burial of McDonald Clarke: A Parody, in the same magazine.)

The Best Poem Of McDonald Clarke

Humility

Do you call me poor, you slugger,
Won't posterity let me hug her,
And won't she hug me back again?
Isn't my pen
The Sceptre of Eternity, to wave
Over Earth's grave?

Don't call me poor—
I don't feel so, I'm sure,
Tho' I can't hug Miss———
Yet, roly-poly Centuries will hug me,
And say her family were unwise,
To look, with scowling eyes,
On the man, the Almighty has knighted,
And his countryman have so slighted.
He thinks of jumping the ocean waters,
For one of John Bull's bunkum daughters.

Poor—that sticks in my poetic crop—
Why, Fooley, I wouldn't swap
My wealth, for Astor's, or the Barings',
Why, the mere pairings
Of my strapping spirit's fruit,
Will fatten the sows of society, thro' all time;
And when I swell my soul to the super-sublime,
Don't I make the Arch-Angels stare,
And the Devil run
From ramskuttleish fun—
I tell you what—I shan't be forgot
By the sister ages, if I am by this,
My memory will have a soaking kiss.

The evening before Earth dies,
The place, where my body lies,
Will be worn by pretty girls' feet;
There they'll sit, and eat
Apples, in the pleasant summer time,
And read my romantic rhyme,
And vow their Grannies were silly, to
Say, Poo! poo!
To me, and my pepper'd poetry, and not make
A whapping wedding cake,
And coax Miss——— to bury her scorn in its centre,
And with me enter
The slippery state of matrimony,
And be Donald's ony dony,
And let me hug her,
Till her heart feels sqush—
Hush, hush—you'll make her blush,
And you've made me blow,
By calling me poor, you slugger,
Psho! Psho!
I'm sure I don't feel so—
So I should think,
From this hurricane of ink.

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