Introduction
Born: December 6, 1886, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Died: July 30, 1918, Seringes-et-Nesles, Picardie, France.
Buried: Elmwood Cemetery, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Born: December 6, 1886, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Died: July 30, 1918, Seringes-et-Nesles, Picardie, France.
Buried: Elmwood Cemetery, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Joyce was the son of Frederick Barnett Kilmer and Annie Ellen Kilburn, and husband of Aline Murray, a poet like himself, with whom he had five children.
He was educated at Rutgers College and Columbia University (graduated 1908).
From 1909–12, he was on the staff of Funk and Wagnalls Publishing in New York City, working on The Standard Dictionary.
He was also a literary editor for The Churchman, and wrote for the New York Times Sunday Magazine.
In World War I, Kilmer enlisted in the New York National Guard and deployed to France with the 69th Infantry Regiment in 1917. He was killed by a sniper’s bullet at the Second Battle of the Marne.
Kilmer is best remembered for his 1913 poem Trees, published in Trees and Other Poems, 1914.
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Joyce Kilmer, 1913